Author: Clitbait

Longing 

I long for the life I built for myself 

With bricks that came from a place within that I didn’t know was there 

With confidence that had lain low for years 

I plucked the plumbing from my chest and built friendships 

And from there the foundations were steady and firm 

We tiled the bathroom with our insecurities and painted over them 

And hung lightbulbs in the dark parts of each other. 

We aired our laundry in the open, and learned to love the creak of the crooked floorboards 

We cemented the walls with shared experience and covered them with pictures of us 

There’s no fight in the world a string of fairy lights won’t fix. 

I long to return to the life we all built 

Through women building up women 

Through endless wine nights and conversations. 

I went looking for an education 

And with it found a lifetime’s worth of company 

Robyn Barclay

Slow

There’s lines all over my life 
Some stand between myself and others 
Building boundaries where I am finally comfortable 
Others are queues I stand in watching everyone get goals before me 
Grades, graduation, validation, varying 
Levels of success that others say are normal

Years of learning to read a certain way 
This works for everyone so why cant it work for you? 
A high school’s worth of adaptation and confrontation that 
This isn’t working for me but I found what does.
The lines in my life move, scrambled like scrabble 
3 points for a B but only if it doesn’t look like a D.
Years of minding my Ps and Q’s because apparently they differ
Pardon my politeness for I am slow 

Reading aloud always sounds like a eulogy 
Mourning the loss of the words I meant to say 
Instead the brain substitutes and institutes an easier alternative 
For me to manage and say 
Or stutter and stammer and try to force out 
Only to be told
you got it wrong again 

Numbers make sense to me in a different way 
I can read it once then say another 
Yet warped, reversed and wrong 
Calculations feel like abrasions, after a while it got better 
Chipping away at the wall between the eyes and the brain
Eventually gluing things together 
Excuse my intelligence for I am slow

Diagnosis is a word I can hardly spell 
And something I hardly gained 
Hours of ‘tell me what is wrong in this line’ 
when I’m looking at a circle
Expressing myself and grasping for explanations I can’t find
I know the words but I don’t know the words
An adult treated like a child because it took too long to notice 
Reconciliation works slowly and silently 

Getting to the right people was half the battle 
The other half is writing my name on the moving line 
Extra time for reading and dreaming of when 
My ability matches my capability.
Frustration of how little I can push myself but, 
Forgive my fortitude for I am not slow 

K Robertson

i’ve built a house

i’ve built a house upon my shoulders
there i will reside
until there comes a time
when it is safe to go outside

i live alone, but every night
a stranger comes to stay
She never introduced herself,
but i’m too shy to say

it’s dark inside our nest
my lamp, the guardian of the tide
the chimney’s always smoking
but it’s still so cold inside

i a baby bird, and She
the swallower of my screams
the monster who knows all
but is unknowable to me

we built a house together
but She’s thrown away the key.
i hope She lets me out tonight
for i can barely breathe.

Lament of the Alphabet

And across an atrium
Beating blue, black blood
Come crashing conclusions. Could
Deliver desperate daydream delusions:
Every ending ever ensured
Farewells from far frames.
Go give God goodbyes,
Hellos. How has hell
Ignited in insatiable instinct,
Jealous jerking, just judging,
Kissing, killing, keeping keen
Lamentations lingering like living
Memories. Many might merit
No notice, no nuance.
Others, oddly open onto
Personal pictures, pondering past
Questions, qualifications. Quiet queues 
Register rocky relationships. Recognise
Stressful situations she seems
Tied to. Tried to
Undo until unknown, unspeakable 
Voodoo visibly violated vows.
“Women won’t want words”
Xenomorphic, xerotic, xanthic xenocracy.
Your young years yearning;
Zealously, zestfully, zodiacly zeroing.

A.M. Asali