Author: Clitbait

How do you sleep?

Is there room for me there?
Between you and the new girl,
Lying with you,
Does she weep?

You know, even after,
I never told a lie,
I never asked you why.
“He’s honestly a good guy”.
I should have been the one to cry.

To cry rape.
To cry assault.
To cry out.
To cry tears,
to rinse away your unwelcome touch.

I don’t need much more room.
Maybe more today than I did that day, sure.
But who doesn’t grow?
Upwards. Outwards.
I stretch my body.
Pulling it apart like putty.

Moulding it with warm hands,
against its natural will.

Doesn’t that sound familiar?
I pushed it in on the days it felt too big.
Too broad.
Too unending.

I’ll ask you again.
How do you sleep?

Maybe, if you both lie on your sides,
Facing in,
Forcing me to stay in between,
We will still all fit.
We could do. We did,
But, after, you slept.

“I should have watched where I stepped.”

I still haven’t slept.
I still haven’t wept.

Sophie Nankivell

Of battles and wars

Of battles we fought inside
Like spiralling whirlpools
Never allowed to spill
Always dripping
Not parched, but never full
Unlike the wars they indulge in
Gushing forth like a tsunami
Washing over battles
For the victory of the war

Of battles that are fought
Over tears shed
For fathers, and brothers, and lovers
Of the wars that they fought
Over the honour
Of what lies between our legs

Of battles fought quietly, demurely
As is expected of our fights
The carnage, our dreams
The spoils, their might
Unlike their wars
Unlike the havoc they wreak
Claiming the laws of the universe

Of the battles we endure
Of all that we ration
As the wars they fight
Steer out of their bastions
The wars they wage
While we salvage

Of all the battles provoked
The ones we did not want to fight
Of the wars we were dragged to
A display of their spite

Of the battles they fought
But claimed were wars
Of our war
The one waged everyday
Against the world
Against us
Against war in itself

Saira Banu

Growing

When I was four years old
My hair was in pigtails
The pin straight parting line, an indicator
Of the righteous path
I was meant to follow

All the way down
To my eyes stained with kohl
To ward off darkness
Underlining my eyes
Underplaying my achievements

To the crook of my nose
That was religiously massaged
By well-meaning keepers of my sexuality
Who sniffed out solitude
From the arch of my nose

My earlobes pierced
Before I could say the word gender
Branding not just my femininity
But my place in society
Weighed down by its expectations
But still enduring

The fuzz above my lips
Smeared with concoctions
To rid itself of sins
That would mar the image
Of a perfect woman
My lips aching
For lipstick to stain them
The foray into womanhood
Only completed by this rite of passage
But not too dark
Dark means evil
But doesn’t dark ward off evil too?

Saira Banu

Victims

You made me shatter / and I was in pieces / mirror shards / your shitty protestations staring / back at you from the floor / where you couldn’t help but throw me / like I was nothing / but a plaything to twist / into a victim

So sometimes I take myself back / and pretend like I’m who I was / before I opened my arms to you / but the truth is I’ll never have the / bright eyes you pierced between your fingernails / without care / because you said they were so pretty

But explosions don’t come without aftermath / and the proof will always be where / you left it / because you have never been more wrong / than when you thought you would escape / in your nonchalance

I like to think / I know your guilt

I know the darkest parts of you / and I know my memory still lives / somewhere you don’t want to address / so you’ll act like it’s fine / that I disappeared because you / couldn’t stop blaming me

You will cover your wounds / with plasters too small / and you will tell yourself / you were right all along

Pretence does not prove anything / and that is a promise because / I am not a saint / and I have screwed things up too / but I have changed and I / would let myself collapse / before papering over the cracks / with lies that will only fracture

Let me tell you / you will not stay sane / as long as you cannot grow

I do not search for a sorry / and I do not plead for you / on your knees / but I ask you / learn / do not look to be a hero / before you have been a victim / to your own mistakes

Katie Proctor

inked

I trace the draft of
the story you planned to write-
in pencil-
but you wanted it in pen.
maybe I did too.
but I knew life could be brighter
if only you wait.

so waiting is what I did,
afraid you might let go-
if I were too fast or slow-
but no- together,
we took the ink
and brushed the page
with a feathered quill,

and together,
we wrote our story
in permanent ink,
the cursive letters
joining words, alike
to the way our hands
connect. eternally.

with the quill, we
write our story into
motion, and the ink
flows free, creating something
beautiful, even in
the stains left

as the ink blots,
as the heart’s passions explode.
art. the smudged
blends into the paper,
the other threads of the tale
to create our own
kind of beautiful.

Lauren Curr

To steady the pendulum

swinging in the dark,
left to right,
I cannot see my own direction.

disillusioned-
unsure of what’s reality,
unsure of me.

dysphoric,
but of what?
who knows,
who needs to know.

maybe, of me, you see,
of me and who I’ll be.

and one day
I’ll know
that I was just for show
and I can be,
truthfully,
the one my heart does know.

Lauren Curr