people say that i am an ugly beauty
and this has confused me since i was small
i didn’t know the word “contradiction”
at the time
but i knew “ugly” was bad
and sometimes “beauty” was worse
i was a child raised on slow nirvana and videocameras
with tv static permanently fizzling in my brain
the colours of a signal gone forever
and ingrained at 2 am
psychedelic turns of light
filling all my memories
ones that i know do not exist
and never have existed
tripping over wires and smoke
scrap pieces of paper crumpled
like my bedsheets
warmth in skin
is distant
and long nights are longer
bic’s produce fire instead of ink
and burn my lungs
broken cameras
don’t have broken pictures
but a broken heart
produces a broken person
i am everything and nothing
i walk the fine line
i am sad and happy and
‘psychedelic turns of light”
is so fake but so true
so here i am-
not everything and nothing
but something in between
- fin -

my friend
she is in a contest
it stressed her out, this contest
i thought
“i would also like to be stressed out”
so i decided to enter myself into prose and poetry-
a contest where i have to make a poem
about me
by people who are not me

how is someone else supposed to know who i am
and perform a poem about them
but also about me
i am not naive enough to think that i am the only one in the world
with insomnia
or who likes oranges
and sketching

but i don’t want to walk into a room
stand at the podium
and speak about
other peoples ideas
that somehow relate to mine

i want to walk into a room
stand at a podium
and speak about me

i want the judge to know that my favourite colour used to be yellow
that my favourite book is winnie the pooh

i want the judge to know me
and not the poetry that is not positively about me

when i think about what to choose as my topic
“this is me” and “this speaks to me”
i find that the latter seems much more
compelling
so much easier

i don’t know how i’m supposed to start the first topic
because i can’t seem to strip myself of everything that makes me up
into a simple matter

i watch girls make poems that move mountains
and i listen to them
because they are beautiful

but if you read a poem about being anorexic
people will only know you as the anorexic girl

to walk into a room
“hello, my name is infinity, my topic is about how i’m an insomniac”
i immediately am telling every single judge
that they are allowed to remove everything about me
that i love
and turn me into

“infinity, number 513, the insomniac”