ON AUTO-CANNIBALISM AND OTHER 10AM OCCURANCES
yolky thursday morning light:
1. i am vomiting pragmatism and my lungs are filled with earth-flax. i feel as if the word stagnant is branded onto my forehead.
2. life is dense and jungled, and i find myself embarrassingly transparent in comparison.
3. it seems like no matter how hard i try, every step of progression is merely paving the way for a further relapse into my own self-indulgence. call that the human condition, i’ll call it stasis. god, this living thing is difficult.
4. speaking of him, god is an incredibly difficult man (???) to get in contact with. i have been looking for him in bodies of water and mirrors and pools of blood for the past nine years, but alas, nothing.
5. if i could talk to god, would he listen? he has no reason to. after all, i have spent years decrying him, shrieking of how he abandoned me. and the worst part is, i am arrogant enough to believe that he actually gives a fuck.
6. and sometimes i pretend that nothing bad has ever happened to me and anger is just a room i pass through and when i feel sad it just fizzles off my skin into beautiful curls of smoke and art.
7. here we are, the glorious seventh circle of hell; the home of nestled violence. i think this is fictitious though, because if you know violence you know it will make a house for itself in whatever crevice it can find.
8. i have this dream where my mother eats me and gives birth to me again and this time i am pink and shiny and perfect. i have another dream where i bleed the wounds of my grandmother and they feel familiar.
9. i have bitten my nails down so far that parts of the skin on my thumb that have never been touched by the sun before are scarlet and stinging.
10. i think, at the centre of this all, i am just one fizzing neuron, firing the same messages over and over and over again.
Grace Bowen, 14, England ✯ BACK TO POETRY: OUROBOROS
“Grace Bowen is a writer from the UK with a mildly concerning obsession with words and myriads of books. She has previously been published in Hearth and Coffin Magazine and was a top 85 Foyle Young Poet.”