it was never going to be okay - jaye simpson

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the sahara & the fall of rome, c s lewis’ science fiction. peter says: stay here you are safe here

      i am seven, & my sisters are painting their nails. shiny with clear coat over pastels. they have locked me in the laundry room, i can hear their giggling

      the lights are off & i am crying again & by again i mean i am laying on the floor trying to see them from the space between the door & floor. the linoleum is stripped from my salt-heavy tears and rushed breath. i have been doing this for years.

      i am five my sisters are saying boy i do not know what the word means but i am bruised into knowing it: the blunt b, the hollowness of the o, the blade of y oh how they struck

      struck when i stole a doll

      brushed her hair & changed her outfit, saying to myself: i want to be painted nails, long locks of shiny hair & soft.

      my foster mother, a cold rock of a mountain, temperamental & prone to avalanches overhears painted nails, long locks, soft. not boy. she cascades and i am pushed out from under the bed, dragged by my ear by her gravity and i am forced to stand naked. struck as she yells boy.

      i am eight,

      i am in the mirror looking at my naked body. i have been doing this for years: pushing prepubescent fat together. i am eight

      i am crying at the hairdresser’s as my sisters are treated like goddesses, preened while i am pruned.

      i am crying,

      called fag for the first time, soon my classmates are saying it, asking me if i am gay & running as if i am contagious, as if they are at risk, as if this was something you could get in the stalls of the boys’ washroom.

      boy.

      i am boy in mother’s house. bound to the blunt b, the hollowness of o, the blade of y

      except in father’s favourite room, where i am free to just be, reading while the piano mournfully sings mozart and i am under it hiding from my siblings.

      crying as peter says, stay here you are safe here

      peter, when the piano stopped playing mozart and just became silent in your absence, the library was converted into a mausoleum i was left with only words. I miss the sound of the piano, the times we spent in the garden, you loved the rhododendrons & roses, the strawberries & rhubarb. peter, you had a box of seeds in the shed, picked one at random and planted it. the spring after you died, you must’ve known for the only seeds left were forget-me-nots. peter, you understood me like you knew the way the piano keys made noise, the way a plant grows from seed to flower. i had to mourn well after you’d left.

      i am nine, i am crying you are dead & i am boy now boy because i do not want boy because they are watching, boy because they say

      they never asked me if i was, only told me i was, & i was not

      the blunt b, the hollowness of o, or the blade of y.

      haunting (a poem in six parts)

      i. the family photo albums

      have you haunted photo albums before? been the blurry phantom in the background? a sorrowful spectre?

      i was taught by wooden spoon that children were seen & not heard; my pale flesh must’ve been reminder that i was burden & beast all in one.

      taught to be ghost long before i could wrap my own hands around my throat— spoke to spirits long before i realized i was just as dead as they were.

      ii. wrong kind of indian

      i sometimes dream of curried goat & the cast iron flat pan cynthia would use to fry roti. she would wet the bottom of a red enamel mug to spread oil before frying (one time she laughed when i asked if i could flip the roti. she laughed even harder when i asked for the recipe. said i was the wrong kind of indian for roti. said i was the wrong kind of brown, too white for my own. said i had a cleaner getaway than my cousins).

      i was too young to understand.

      my fingers were always yellow after my nails a deep hue of spice. after peter died, she cooked less.

      told me feed myself, that now was a good time to learn.

      iii. the family photo albums 2

      one year, i came across a family album: couldn’t find a smaller version of myself couldn’t find a fuller smile of myself couldn’t find anything but photos of a woman i called cynthia, a dead man & their daughter. i saw vacations in disneyland, mexico & london (ones i was always kept from)

      iv. thieving intentions

      remember how she told me not to ever call her momma, grandma or auntie. when she felt generous or i cried too much: she’d chuckle and ask if i needed some of her good old TLC (t e n d e r l o v i n ’ c a r e).

      sometimes if i plucked enough slugs

      from the strawberry patches,

      or gardened enough,

      especially after peter died,

      she’d let me rest my head

      on her chest. The sound of her

      breathing felt like i was stealing

      s o m e t h i n g

      not for me.

      v. locks, stopping & libraries

      i stopped reaching out when she locked the door to my bedroom, got used to wet pillows from crying, stopped trying to impress her, stopped doing homework stopped laughing stopped painting & drawing stopped writing & started reading, ran away to the library made sanctuary between shelves & book covers learned to stop asking

      vi. the cost of a photograph

      one christmas after living in her home for near a decade during a large dinner with her extended relatives:

      someone called for a family photo.

      i went to take my place in it she said this one’s for family— swatting my sister & me away. the camera caught the blur of my back. it is the only family photo i am in.

      have you haunted photo albums before?

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