Clinic

As i turned twenty i found myself entangled in heirlooms

Of my Father's word against mine, of my mother's laundry cycles and timetables

Of biting curses and sweet nothings

Of the world and my naked being as i

Stepped foot into my skin, feeling felt, feeling seen

Till i fell into a crack, face first, snapped my neck,

All while stargazing with another lost being looking for something, someone else

All while being with something, someone else —

And i hope you're now doing fine with your delusions and stick-and-poke inked skin made from stolen needles from your clinics —

But here i am, and as i turned twenty

I found myself rushed through clinics, learning to despise the smell of antiseptic and the beep of my own heartbeat as it fell

And i fell into another deep sleep

With newly formed memories of panic on the operating table; not fearing death

Rather my own nakedness and vulnerability

To the forces and hands around me

To the way i consume what i am prescribed

An information machine, dulled filters of once cutting-edge disobedience against authority.

I awoke in a new world

Realising that there was more to living than the 6-bedroom flat i grew up in and never departed from

Axioms of brick turned ceramic

Cement of knowledge turned words against words against words against the worst reality of knowing nothing then

Reeling back

Into my snow globe of glass,

Scared girl staring from afar, looking out,

Staying in, realising

Why they say twenty is young and the years start to blur

As i still feel stuck at sixteen with fake ids and whimsies, never thinking i'd make it to eighteen

Where i'd learn my own cycles and write a makeshift bible

And i started to learn why lofty dreams stayed with their description

People streamlined into systems

And i did not question prescriptions