She Must Be Mad Read online

  She’s beautiful

  But the god I hate force fed my mouth

  With words about my figure

  That’s why tonight it’s gum for dinner

  I say god

  But the voice isn’t holy

  It’s the voices of memories

  Of boys who shuddered to hold me

  Strange men in the street who scolded me

  Inner thoughts who offered me

  Biscuits when I was sad not hungry

  That’s why tonight it’s gum for dinner

  Perhaps I’ve got the wrong idea

  Praying to someone who isn’t here

  For more lithe limbs and straighter hair

  Bowing solemnly to such unfair words

  Because if he was real, he’d be a sinner

  He couldn’t last on gum for dinner

  He’d have no power in his bones

  His voice would shout in shadowed tones

  And pass out before he could complain

  The confliction of this strength for weakness

  Has always driven me insane.

  trump

  Tell me, sir

  Explain it loud and clear

  Shout your most direct

  Explicit fears

  Scream them until

  The decibels reach parallel

  To the clang and clatter in my heart

  Until you can rage each syllable

  So pointedly you can throw your voice like a sharpened dart

  And throw it for me

  Speak for me

  Times those fears by ten

  Then times them by one hundred

  And one thousand and again

  Keep multiplying what shakes you

  Until it becomes so monstrous

  So tangible and noxious

  That it no longer feels like fear

  It just feels constant

  Familiar

  Monotonous

  Like you’ve spent your life rehearsing

  For a nightmare

  As the understudy

  Never quite enough for the part

  Because you don’t qualify as somebody

  Like you’ve learnt every line

  As though what you feel is fiction

  And you’ll never get the lead as someone

  Whose script is written with conviction

  Tell me, sir

  Explain it loud and clear

  Explain it so loudly my unborn daughter can hear

  Project your voice into the future

  If you can impregnate me with these lost morals

  You’re free to rape me just as quick

  And then what happens if you conceive more than fear?

  What happens if I don’t want that kid?

  Your future is bubble-wrapped

  And I’m held punishable for it.

  Try and tell me that you’re scared

  As you bang my head on the glass ceiling

  And drag me by my hair

  Through statements like

  SHE ASKED FOR IT

  I’m pretty sure I didn’t …

  Pretty sure I’m pretty more

  Than a pretty face to be ignored

  Tell me, sir

  Explain it loud and clear

  Because I’m lost

  Wandered down too many paths

  With no roads for me safe enough to cross

  Without carrying my keys like a weapon

  Been employed in too many places

  Where I’m a disposable body on a ladder to step on

  Tell me, sir

  Mr, why are your Mrs’

  Missing out?

  Why do you consider us so little?

  Who was the man that taught you

  To grow into this man so bitter

  Dishing out

  What I can and cannot be?

  Who was the man that showed you a lesser being

  And why was that lesser being me?

  filters

  My eyes a little brighter

  My teeth a little whiter

  My skin a little clearer

  And my hair

  …accidentally a little greener

  The contrast of the exposure

  Is not one that’s clearer

  The definition of the portrait

  Is one of a heavyweight

  Photoshopper

  VSCO-er

  I feel pretty when I’m told I am

  I feel petty when it’s as cold as

  I’m a barefaced liar

  #NoFilter filter

  A scared-faced beauty in disguise

  A normal looking human being

  But my profile picture has you surprised

  As though it’s an image I’d been dreaming

  The resemblance is close

  My jawline is still mine

  And my nose is still my nose

  But would I still be of anyone’s desire

  If I wasn’t hidden behind Instagram’s required

  Mask?

  The mask of a fool

  The mask of the twenty-first-century cruel world

  Or the mask of a self-conscious tryna be cool girl

  Does it matter?

  I still sit and pixelate

  Digitally deliberate, curl into an aesthetic looking ball

  Until my anxiety is a candidate for Britain’s Next Top face of the intimidated

  My idea of beauty was once so different

  So why have I confined that wonder

  Into an ugly 4x4 square of imprisonment?

  That has parameters smaller than the size of my thighs and is duller than the natural gradient of my eyes

  I sit back so often with a chest thudding sigh

  Scrolling

  Refreshing

  Relentless tapping

  All down to an art

  And think

  Since when did I ignore my own heart to hack at my own life?

  And since when did I become an image to sell of a millennial with scraps of sanity as its price?

  london pervs

  I swear to god

  I’ll swear louder than the tops

  Of my stretched swollen lungs

  I’ll scream ’til I’m blue

  And tie knots in your slimy shallow tongues

  I swear to god

  It’s quite a simple thing to grasp

  That if you shout at me in the street

  Or brush your hand against my arse

  If you simmer me down to a piece of meat

  I won’t be the one falling to their knees

  Put your whistles in your pockets

  Force your eyes back in their sockets

  Spin your heels and curve your tongues into a curl

  I will only say this once so listen up:

  You’ve picked the wrong girl.

  women’s tea

  I went into a health food store

  To buy some spring roll skins

  And found myself instead

  In an aisle of loose leaf tea tins

  Digestion, anxiety, whatever your ailment

  They were stacked in dozens of varieties

  And foreign flagrant flavours

  This one box caught my eye

  Barbie brash bold pink

  It read ‘Women’s Tea’

  And I was lost on what to think

  Stuff the patriarchy!

  Stuff your colour-denoted sexes!

  When were leaves vulnerable to this malarkey!

  I bet it’s even more expensive

  So I marched with echoed stomps

  And slammed it on the desk

  Turns out some herbs are good for cramps

  And some are good for men

  So I pocketed my placards

  And zipped my coat over my Pankhurst shirt

  And thought before I spluttered statistics

  I should have a cuppa first.

  imposter

  I have always thought
/>
  That people have commented on

  My beauty

  Because of my female appearance

  As though my gender was a given

  For physical applause

  But never did I realise

  That it could be because they found me beautiful

  And yet when it’s been suggested

  That I’m not in proportion

  I have felt unworthy

  Of this gender at all

  And panic unsure

  In a male gaze

  That tips me on a scale

  Of which I always weigh too heavy

  To know what’s true.

  hunger

  Weighted by the weight of me

  Weightless when I quickly eat

  Forgetting all the bits I see

  In the bathroom, only me

  At the table I transport

  To somewhere that I can’t be caught

  Ham-fisted with empty calories

  Picking plates, pushed pieces

  Straightened back, stretched out creases

  Knife and fork, balanced crossed

  Brain salivating into figures lost

  What deliciousness it forces, fake

  As the satiation is a masked empty

  That is only weighted by the weight of me.

  gift for a man

  I’m scared that if things don’t change

  If I don’t shout louder

  I’ll be met with a future daughter

  Who will feel a pressure on her worth to shrink shorter

  And I’ll be responsible if I have to hear her say:

  ‘How can I be so foolish

  to sit with marble ham thighs

  A masculine tone

  Dilated pupils and tar-stained bone

  And think someone might wish

  Upon each passionate gesture I make

  I might be his to kiss?’

  Fingers that bend all but the middle

  Dirtied language and eyes of white

  Stand to a halt as each stranger approaches her at night

  And as she struggles to find the compliment

  It’s their lurid advances that give her a twisted confidence

  That no matter how tall she stands

  She’ll only be worthy of love

  If she kneels, plain and thin

  As a gift for a man.

  How will I make her feel something new

  When I’ve spent so much time feeling that that might be true?

  sobriety

  This present day

  Has no tonic to dilute it

  Uncarbonated calm

  Eyes wide awake

  That stare down old habits

  Searching out new ones

  Somewhat disappointed

  To find present day.

  cellulite (sells you heavy)

  There is a fold beneath the crease

  That haunts me with trepidation

  And despite what preparation

  Goes into each breakfast

  It seems there is an infiltration

  This breeding nation

  Of fat

  That crawls and creeps between my legs

  Regardless of what weight I shed

  The bicycle motions I do in bed

  Are relentless

  Where is the redemption

  For those who exercise?

  My thighs

  Jesus Christ the size

  It should not be fair

  Cellulite, sells you heavy

  Cells from genes I was not ready to grow

  Jeans that are unable to grow with me

  They exhaust me from the source of me

  They heckle me from each freckle on me

  And if I could take a biological eraser

  Remove these frustrating chubby placers

  I thought I would

  I tried to tell myself each dimple is a smile along my skin

  A lightning bolt breaking from within

  The happiness of a chicken nugget

  Is a small white rocket

  That bends to be a part of me

  Pretends to be a piece of me

  But nothing that small can be the defeat of me

  And that’s why I stopped wishing them away

  I can’t tell you how free it feels to prod them

  And be okay

  To look at them and be fine

  To open up and say

  My body stretched to make this space

  And these tiny imperfections are mine.

  fat

  Please

  I beg you

  Don’t touch that

  That handle that you want to grab

  That protruding piece of mass

  Please don’t touch that

  Don’t remind me of my dinner

  Then absolve your arms as though I am thinner

  Please don’t touch that

  Please don’t touch that and then pretend it isn’t there

  Yet still give me an unapproving stare

  When I reach for seconds

  Please, I’m asking nicely

  Don’t touch that even politely

  Don’t laugh at all my icons

  And say I could be her if my thighs were gone

  If my legs were tight and long

  Please don’t touch that

  Don’t command my skin like you are proud

  When publically you are loud

  About how there’s too much

  But somehow in bedroom whispers

  Your language dissolves straight into touch

  Please don’t touch that

  If you can’t see it’s me

  I have spent too many years

  Stroking my own thigh to knee

  To know what’s there

  And if for a sober second

  Deep within your heart’s compassion

  You think you might have capacity

  To hesitate my weight and then scream sexual passion

  Please for the love of god don’t touch that

  Don’t touch me at all

  Because I spend too much time weighing myself

  To wait to see that you’re such a fool

  To touch me

  And not see the pain that’s looking back

  Don’t touch me when you know how I feel and you call that feeling fat

  Please don’t touch that.

  body part 2

  He touches you. He is no one in particular in your recollection, he has become many faces. Faces that interchange within your memory upon recalling any which one of these stories you begin to tell your friends and then retreat. You say nothing. Your face grows depressed at the concept and with your same face you feel disgusting. As hands paw along your flesh you are so aware of all that you are. How that might be unattractive. How if it feels uncomfortable to you, how grotesque it must feel from the palms of another. Past experience has told you this anxiety is worthy. Past faces have furrowed eyebrows and then widened and pursed lips to disgruntle at the space within which you take up. You push it from your brain. Relax. Remember to relax. Remember that the reason why you have a disjointed relationship with your body is because you can’t relax. But you can’t. Popping candy synapses wet between your ears and fire off all manner of heart spasms and unease and short breaths and weighted defeat.

  He asks you to say things, to do things.

  You say them, you do them.

  In the same instance that you choose not to remember his name, because he has had so many, you choose not to remember the list of bursting speech bubbles that blew from between your lips with syruped saliva, and even though they are old, they sound new, and even in your memory, you say them again.

  Dutifully.

  This, surely, is how you relax.

  Listening, observing, serving. Taking action and control from someone more confident, more experienced. You let him touch you, your body shivers with an immoderate buzz of panic that he confuses f
or excitement, quietly disguising against your own will, relearning your own body. These are not mixed messages, this is the only language that you know. Quietly in inner turmoil. Nothing here is obvious or certain. It’s just uncomfortable. But that’s how it always is and how it’s always been and you are sure will always be and the reason why you feel so disconnected and afraid and ashamed of this experience is because all that he’s touching, all that he’s grabbing already distastefully is

  Fat.

  You feel every inch of yourself squirm. Suddenly everything is obvious and everything is certain.

  Everything is wrong.

  You are stuck in the flash of your own realisation, hands reaching for duvet, fingers being bent back upon themselves with his.

  His pace quickens and you assume a noise to the action, you heard it once in a film your friend’s older brother showed you, a stale but stuck reference point, so you echo it. Echo, echo, echo.

  You find yourself here time and time again, telling yourself that you’re putting yourself through exposure therapy, telling yourself you deserve it, telling yourself this is good, telling yourself this is normal, this is normal, you have put yourself here, you have been complicit this far, ignore why, ignore your discomfort, ignore the fact you realised this on the journey here and you’ve since tried to leave and you’ve asked to leave, you’ve asked politely and then you’ve said bluntly and then you’ve booked a cab and then it’s been cancelled, but your brain is so heavy with hate and self-doubt and confusion that you’ve forgotten you’ve said those things. You’ve forgotten he’s noticed, you’ve forgotten he’s said no to your no, you’ve forgotten he’s played into your weakness. You’ve forgotten who you are. So you listen to his rhetoric and tell yourself that your body will be yours to own once someone has put a price on it that you’re willing to buy it back for. But you never seem to. You never want to buy it back because it is offered in such unrecognisable packaging, that you hope the last transaction means it’s yours no longer.

  ‘Please, please, just take me. Take it all from me and let me no longer be responsible.’

  Your responsibility feels excruciating and complicated and exhausted.

  You had tried so many times to free your body but now it’s all so enmeshed you’re lost for how.

  You’re lost. You’re tired. You’re vulnerable. Unknowingly, because of those things, your brain is whimpering on behalf of your body:

  ‘Please, please, just take me. Take it all from me and let me no longer be responsible.’

  Until one day a man does, in a way that you feel is absolute, that feels so concrete, he takes it in such a way that it is no longer yours to bargain with. He stamps on it. You have been here before but until this moment you don’t realise the danger. He touches your fat body and tells you what it is, he drags it, tells you he’s caressing, and no matter how many times you question it in your head, question it aloud, say you are tired, say you are asleep, actually fall asleep, dream vivid nightmares prematurely, wake up and feel his breath inhale your protests, he hands back half the worth that’s half the worth of what you were afraid of that you owned. Nobody knows, you never mention it. Just him. Just you. In retrospect, just all of you. Just a night where you entered a room feeling fat and left feeling much heavier. You wonder for months, ‘Would this have happened if I was skinny and confident and could just say no?’ And one day you hope, it’s still not yet, you can turn around and see that you’d always said no, and one day you’ll see that no rolls or cellulite can count as witnesses, not because it wasn’t true, but because they weren’t there.