OKAY, YOU MAY KNOW ME.
AFFIRMATIONS: faith for the present, hope for the future , gratitude for the past. to heal isn’t to be absolved of pain, it is to know how to deal with it. and you’re learning every moment. but when you left i was devastated. i thought you ought to kill me, take all my money and run. it would have been a kindness. but this, this is brutal, evil. and i know you feel it too. i know it pains you too. because you loved me more than life itself and i loved you just as much. you are broken too because you couldn’t possibly live without my love or loving me. i am tired of being the person that i am. i wish i could hurt myself because maybe then i care enough to feel. now i am just stuck. in pain. trembling in a consistent murmur of disdain for myself. i do not want to better myself, i want to be someone else. i want to kiss song birds and dance in spring. in los angeles. there is always a hill close by. and if not. if you cannot see one. you think to yourself. is it me? am i the hill? i dream to be the flâneur. i saw a pink man in a blue car today. i remember the day i told my mum i wished we were like the white families. not for their privilege or generational wealth. not for their privilege. i wished to be like the white families because of their ease. the white families drove with all the windows down. the white families cussed. the white families shouted 80s music and stared deeply into each other’s eyes. the white families hugged and cuddles and kissed and loved. the white families laughed: together. spontaneity was a privilege. freedom to express was a privilege. my skin feels vague. like a nondescript shield unsure of its purpose, yet certain that it’s presence is obligatory. what does it hide? what secrets does it tightly package ? keeping it all in safely. i am a tap. constantly flowing. feeding the earth as i loose life force. i wish i was good enough to be bad and it matter. i want to be sucked out by the sea dug into the sand and spun til i’m clean. i want to tumble and choke and burn and bleed. and when the tide is gone and she’s done with me. i will finally be free. the past scrubbed off. and i left raw. there, on the speckled beach, i will be rung out by the sun. she will toast me in her light, drying my lungs so i may breathe in this new body of mine. forever remembering the bathe of the sea. i don’t think i’ll...my heart can only take so much. when the sea is light and frothy. i don’t know what to do with all my feelings. sometimes i think i need to throw up. to violently expel the pain that fills my gut and bubbles in my throat. maybe if i jerk and gag and retch and heave the— i still do math in my head every time i eat. it’s involuntary now and i am cursed with the knowledge i have been acquiring since prepubescence. i am unsure how to unlearn these numbers i know so well or, better yet, how to release myself from the habit of remembrance. so, i accept my fate as a hungry mathematician and eat in fear and pain. this piece is a dedication to anger. i feel itchy all over my body but i can’t tell where to scratch. now im scratched raw. blood caked under my nails. and i feel a tingle in my nose. i had a dream that i had had surgery and there was an infection on the site that made it swell and become a pustule. today i stood waiting for the elevator i never called. my skin crawls with mediocrity. i had a dream where i went delirious from the diabetes and couldn’t remember what tattoos i got so i woke up one day just tatted as fuck and i was freaking out bc i didn’t remember getting any new tattoos. mum thinks all my work is about sex because it’s a lot of nudes. and some of it is, she’s right. i had a dream that dad got remarried and started bringing his new wife around and didn't tell me but everyone else knew. and when i tried to tell him about how he had dusted his hands off our family long ago so what difference did it make, he just laughed in my face. no one stood by me. when scrubbed when carved when picked when burned. when smeared when churned when fluffed when permed. when stopped when kissed when touched when starved. when held when stopped when seen when kept. i am from raw cake batter. i think for my whole life i’d just been painfully waiting for someone to think i’m special. now i know i’d been here the whole time. i just remembered how during last christmas break i bought all my closest friends little gifts; and when we got back no one had bought anything for me. some had even bought each other gifts but no one had anything for me. i’m tired of feeling undesirable. i feel like everybody knows something i don’t and i know i’m right. i feel conflicted by my constant state of dread. last night i dreamt of a dining table. ive been feeling the biggest feelings these last couple months. honeslty im always feeling the biggest feelings but the rapidly fluctuating emotions ive been experiencing recently are quite tiring. im glad that if i have a really hard day today then i can count on the possibility of a better one tomorrow, but some consistency would be nice. i am beginning to get sea sick. where’s the line between seeking reassurance and fishing for compliments? nice and meek. why must everything have an acronym? why are we in such a rush? no one ever asks to see me. i feel like a beggar. i feel a great sense of self pity. it’s so boring. there is nothing more boring then pitying oneself. fragile or delicate? i need light. i need life to exist inside me. we’re all so fascinated with murmurations, questioning the reasons why birds would do such a thing. what purpose does it serve? how do they all move with such connectedness, a shared knowing? my question is why wouldn’t they? why wouldn’t they sense each other’s bodies and move accordingly? we dance. we walk in herds and know just where to step. what is the purpose of our processions and how different are they really? what if, like us, the birds look down and watch as we sway together unconsciously, consciously, in oscillating huddles? what do you think they ask each other? do they also want to understand why we move for nothing, to go nowhere and for no one but ourselves? are they a dance partner we are yet to meet? i just saw a video of dimpling focaccia and it almost made me cry. i miss home. i miss warm bread. it took me an hour and a half to read 15 pages. 15 fucking pages. i am rotten. what is it with feet? why do we feel so viscerally about them? i had a dream where i swung a man with both my hands on both his arms and through him from an attic into the pool down below. i’m really scared that i’m gonna lose everyone. it just makes me question everything because i feel like i’m just not good and i don’t think before i speak and i hurt people unknowingly and unintentionally but i hurt them nonetheless and now— now i think i need to be left alone. to think or suffer or something. maybe then i’ll think more about what people will feel about what i’m about to say. i know i am flawed but i feel like i will never understand the breadth of my flaws. like they’re happening without my consent. i don’t want them. please take them away. i know humans are flawed but i fear mine will isolate me. why not just isolate myself? take control in the matter. i don’t want to be alone. i love people so much. i don’t know if i deserve people. especially the ones i want. i am not ready for the life that i want. the one i see for myself, i can’t handle. i am far too fragile. i am so grateful that we can talk and i wouldn’t prefer silence but the conversation feels like cuts and im tired of healing wounds. i know it is constant work. i know i cannot stop working to better myself and better my relationships but i am exhausted. i spent my adolescence trying to stay alive and now i’m here in my twenties(?)- still alive and still crawling. when do i stand up? i’m shaking. i’m always shaking a little but now i’m shaking a lot. why can i recognise others as complex and still love them but myself i find unloveable? what if i don’t want to love my complexities? i don’t think they serve me in any way. they just make it harder for my breath to hit the very bottom of my lungs. i want to breathe deeply. don’t i deserve to breathe deeply? my nose won’t allow it. neither will my heart or my lungs or my chest or my breasts or my shaking. i hate that i’m always shaking. i think my body is perpetually petrified. my body knows i’m anxious before i do. i am not my body. what about the person filming the orgy? do they feel lonely? it feels like choking. on my own fingers. on spit up. from hands around my neck. whose hands are around my neck? “i think i was born to die.” “why?” “because i am always in pain. some bodies were not meant to survive.” some people i think love me so much. some people i think love me a little. some people think they love me so much. some people i think don’t love me enough. i need to be squeezed until the funk seeps out. i feel nauseous all the time. someone needs to take my phone away. there's a foot on my neck and my life is slowing being drained as i am mishandled, choking and begging for some reprieve— to be held. i had a dream i was being chased by a dolphin on land and he tried to bite my hand and then he turned around to use his tail to wack me. there were other concerning things about this dream but this one was definitely one of them.
santoni kina, 21, Los Angeles - USA ✯ IG: @calicosfinds & www.santonikina.com
“santoni’s work is an exploration of intimacy, the body, community and marginalized identity. From sculpture to film, poetry to photography; santoni’s approach to making relates to her intersectional identities and passion for candid expression through authentic representation of the self.”