I stole some underwear on a whim
but also cuz I didn't have much money
more than most tho

Someone told me they stole cheese

People put avocados through as potatoes cuz they're not affordable

I knew someone who paid for about a third of the bras they took and stole the rest so that they would be a more affordable price

Maybe things shouldn't be cheaper but wages should definitely be higher.

Our hospital is dying with the people within,
the concrete flakes like dying skin.

We spend $3billion dollars on defence annually.
I saw 'we' when I never chose that, I would never agree to it.
They say 'defence' when it's an imperialist war project by the West.

I wonder whose suffering is propping up whose suffering and
how all that suffering is propping up someone else's profit.

I wonder how sufferers might forge some sense of solidarity
and overthrow the poor mongers, the war mongers together.

I read about death and violence

I proof read,
and top up
and eject
and print
and scan
and hand in
and sometimes I get full marks.

Mark.
Marks
Marks on the body.
Mark my words.
(Mark my work.)
Karl ******* Marx
The communist who launched a thousand memes.

My oh my.

//

The necropolitical is like a funnel
a filter,
a sieve.
Like baking,
only you didn't forget to put the oven on
and people are inside the oven and so are you.

It's not like with the toaster
when ur mum tells u to scrap the black crumbs into the drain.

It's not like you can unburn the burnt.
Oh and the skin grafts?
There's a waiting list for that.
The waiting list?
There's a form for you to get on that.
The forms?
You need to print them out.
The printer?
OUT OF ORDER.
Buy your own.
OUT OF STOCK.
Your bank balance?
FUNDS INSUFFICIENT.
Your bank?
Sorry you have reached us out of outside of our operating hours.

Outside
Outside of our
Outside of our operating
of our operating hours
operating hours
and hours
and hours
and hours
Thanks for holding! A representative will be with you shortly...

[Dave Dobbyn music continues playing through the phone]

Why can’t we swear in academia?
Why can’t we swear in acedmia?
Tell me, WHY THE **** can’t we swear in academia,
why the EVER LOVING **** , can’t we swear in academia?

Say **** how we’d actually say ****? Why the **** we gotta contort into this ****-*** RESPONSIBLE, PROPER, PROFESSIONAL, BUSINESS-CASUAL, ******* ***-WIPING ******* LANGUAGE that no one can ******* relate to or get their head around? Academia GET YOUR RESPECTABILITY POLITICS OFF MY ****, OUT OF MY FACE AND OFF MY **** and let me say “****’S ****** UP!” when **** sure as **** IS ****** UP! Actually no, academia, **** OUTTA HERE WITH YOUR TONE POLICING CLUSTERFUCK, I’m not waiting for permission. I’m gunna start right the **** now. And don’t you dare tell me to shut up, **** **** **** ******-****, YOU BIG-BOYZ CLUB OF WHITE ***** *******, **** yourself.

Beach shell varnished, kerosene,
A crack in coastal stain glass window, like a hair across the face
Disrupting the vast porcelain
“you’ve got a hair on your face, let me just”
and then it takes the lipstick with it,
a line printed like a paper cut,
“where’s the razor? Where did you put it?”
I put it in the bin and try and not seem too desperate.
We bundle into a car
Like some odd kind of sleepover.
A plaque on the wall saying the current prime minister opened it back in the day.
The old building is cracking like sedimentary rock in reverse.
The lemon lime and bitters clink in the bag and
I can almost convince myself it’s a summers day packing to go
Off to the beach, running down
With a picnic blanket
Sand in shoes
Tinkling down like an egg timer.
Seals, odd floppy babies about to bark,
The tussock a balding old man, spattered across the dunes
“let’s get icecream”
“let’s get fish and chips”
“let’s get out and stop take a photo”
the wind whipping your hair at your face
flicking icream off the cone onto your face,
why is it all so messy?
Let’s got to kākanui, let’s go to moeraki
Let’s stop to get a coffee.
You sure it’s safe to drive, this tired?
Let’s stop and have a nap.

You good to go?
Yeah
You sure?
Yup

I wouldn’t like this.

A class full of uncomfortable individualised strangers.
An over head projector,
prodding, obvious questions,
trying to ascertain the exact purpose or meaning.
The space for ambiguity is closed up like a canon eclipsed by an earthquake.
Highlighter and underlining of a spontaneous experience.
They are trying to make water into concrete.
I just want it be able to bubble and foam and languish
but they want to pin it down.
I would be sad and disgusted if I saw my floaty feelings
pin boarded up onto the wall for dissection
Do not treat my insides in this way

The fonterrorists will go elsewhere
The big boy powers always find a small dot far away from their large splodge
To check and wreck havoc to
It’s got to be far far enough away that if you can smell the smoke,
It’s faint enough that you could mistake it for incense
Or your might twitch your nose
Turn your head and say
Is someone smoking?
It smells like someone is smoking?

When the water is more **** than water
When it is only dry, desitutte,
eroded wasted uselessness,
The fonterrorists will go elsewhere
Somewhere with more utility.

VC
CV
CCTV
STD
STI
FYI
DTF
EFTS
FTW
***
WHO
WOW
POW
WWI
WWII
WTH
­TTPA
HTTP
TOFTB
OTP
SMH
IMHO

I wrote student fees and it autocorrected to
fears

My friend was drunk and said CV
when they meant VC

Volunteering is sold to us like a product,
it's not that it's good in of itself,
it's good for your self,
it'll look good on your CV

it'll look good on your CV
it'll look good on your CV
it'll look good on your CV

if only you could see me
if only you could see me
if only you could see me

you'd see the way my face freezes or flinches
either one,
there is a pain that runs across my face like an electric shock

dehumanising someone is like they invented a wireless, handsfree, bluetooth way of stabbing someone,
you can do it without touching me,
but I can assure the pain in my chest will tell you otherwise,
you have cut me

please help me find the plug at the wall
help me restart
help me find the USB charger
help me connect

you've convinced me that if I claw at my arm long enough
wires will spark and spit at me
I am a machine because you treat me as one

like when they ask for my number at Student Health
or they ask for my number at Studylink
or they ask for number at the Bank
I remember I am nothing like everyone else.

Does logging off look bad on your CV?

Use canned spaghetti as thread to stitch together the frayed edge of your t-shirt. Use your t-shirt to show how you’re the coolest most-hippest, most up with the kids kid there is. Where’d you get that shirt? Online.

Bop your head to the music so they know you know this song. Harder or they won’t see you. That’s not hard enough. Neck snap! Yeah, right there. Hold still while I take a photo. Do you mind if I make this my cover photo?

Take a selfie of you crying in the bathroom and hashtag it. Snapchat it to your local MP so they know how you feel - be sure to use an emoji. #studentdebt Tears streaming down your face. (If it’s a hashtag it’s easier to emotionally process.) #policebrutality #throwbackthursday #massincaceration It’s a good thing there’s emojis for black people now. Look at how far we’ve come!

#nomakeup #vegan #crueltyfree #childslavelabour #iwokeuplikethis #campusrape #notallmen #yesallwomen #freethenipple #2k16 #mentalhealthcuts #stopkillingtranswomen #waterislife #standwithstandingrock

Have you followed Human Rights on Facebook? It’s the only way to get them. Have you seen the Ted Talk about it? In just 20 minutes you’ll know everything there is know about it.

Sorry. You don’t seem like you’re focused. You’re thirsty? Let me make you a smoothie.
I’ll put the chocolate bar in the blender whole, leave the wrapper on. Taste the tinfoil and the plastic. Eat the barcode, become the product. That’s modern life.

Don’t take out the hair or the fingernail or the Band-Aid. Don’t hide from the human components of the production line that made this Kit-Kat possible for you, kid. That’s modern life.

Go to the voting booth, refuse to choose between the diversity of 50 versions of the same smiling white man. Scrawl: **** these ******! (have no faith in none of them) That’s modern life.

With jittering teeth and goosebumps, put your toaster in the sink. Overflow it with water. You will only need a fork to get warm. Electrocution is the most economical form of heating. Be Energywise. That’s modern life.

Puff marijuana smoke through the bars into the brown faces of those who were incarcerated for doing what you freely do now. That’s modern life.

Burn your eyes on the screen. But before you do, memorise the 0800 number for the optometrist.

Post your suicide note on YikYak to save paper. No-one likes reading hard copies these days anyways. #papercuts #selfharm

Search for motivation on EBay. If you’re lucky it’ll have free shipping and arrive in 1-5 business days.

Snapchat your friend’s words of encouragement, God knows they’ve seen enough dickpics.

Take a chicken to KFC and tell them you’re sorry.

Get in the cars of the men who yell “Hey baby!”. They’ll be so surprised they wont know what to do next.

Swap your woman-chest with a man-chest and see if your ******* are still illegal.

Drive through town throwing dirt with one hand and seeds in the other. Maybe, if you do it long enough this claustrophobic concrete will be gone.

Bleed on every seat until the government pays for menstrual products.

Train seagulls to throw YOU chips.

**** a woman and a man simultaneously, so that you can be sure everyone knows you’re bisexual.

Blockade inaccessible buildings with piles of wheelchairs.

Grab time by the fabric and rip it, cuz we all know rips look really punk, and all you really are is just some young punk.

I like talking about *******
And I like laughing about awkward situations that aren’t my own
I love hearing about how other peoples parent relationships are just as ****** up if not more than mine.
I feel understood when someone new inevitably tells me they have anxiety,
Or that they hated school.
Cigarettes and beer on men’s breathes still make me dissociate.
And I still try and squash my stomach out of existence or into my pocket to put someone else’s comfort first.
And I still ignore pain during *** and separate my mind and body into compartments to situate myself in the part where it feels good.
I’m still angry.
I still get pangs when I see particular people’s names, or photos, or mention of their friends or favourite music. The pang is dulled now like a blunted needle…
But still the stab reminds me of the twang it used to bring.
That would pull at my limbs till I was foetal and wretching.
I think I got bored of my own pain,
Or I wore myself out.
I think there’s only so long you can hold both sides of a non-existent conversation.
I’m still reaching for affection, compliments and pet names…
And I don’t know if it’s ****** or parental but god I just want to be hugged.

I caught myself by surprise once when I snuggled up to my dad and as I lay beside him watching a movie, I revealed to myself how much I was hurting.

I am sick of crying bathroom selfies. I am sick of shower crying and breakfast skipping. But I do like the rush your body gives you after you’ve let loose on tears.
It makes me wonder if depression is just a little bit addictive.

I still like that feeling…and sometimes I want to feel sad because it feels deep..
But it’s only enticing until you’re there and then it’s a deceptive tar pit of hell,
And you’re tricked and sticky and heavy.

I haven’t been depressed in ages,
But my memory’s bad so I might have felt awful last week
I’m not sure.

do they ever ask you your gender on a form and
just let you
answer no

sometimes when they leave a blank line for you to write on
I just write
lol

it's all too funny to engage with
where to be begin
tell me why we're still doing this

For a year I had a folder in my computer called "hey dad".  I used to take photos of myself when I had been crying really badly. I wanted to see if the sadness would show up in my face. I wanted someone to see it.  I didn't know why I did it. But I think it's because you were never there to see me cry. I think it's because if it reached a breaking point where I wanted to bombard you with how much I'd suffered and struggled and you'd hit back with telling me it wasn't true I'd send you those photos. Their dates extending across a whole year. Me wearing different clothes, different hair, but each one a picture of anguish, I wanted you to be confronted with it inescapably. But then I felt like you wouldn't want that, so I deleted it.

The only note I took from yesterdays class was “the western governments failed to do anything about it” and that really drove home for me how transferable and different yet identical ongoing war is. WW1, WW2, Iraq, the syrian war.

I don’t know where poetry sits in all this. I think poetry without action is like theory without praxis so I to an extent I don’t really care what poetry is or should be in regards to war. There is a limit to what the written word can do in terms of changes the course of things and influencing people, it’s not nothing but it’s also not enough. The recognition of the limitation or inadequacy of the written or spoken word is demonstrated in how many poets are activists, they know speaking or writing alone is not enough.

I think poetry can be fuel, nourishing, provoking but then it’s like what are you gunna do about it? Western politics, particularly liberalism seems to have gotten it’s wires crossed somewhere along the line and some people seem to believe that talking about and reading about things is enough, that think pieces can actually change things and help people in of themselves.

I think the most poetry can be is a starting point, a seed, but what are you gonna do to grow it further?

I think poetry can be a call to action, and a call to action shouldn’t be read as a metaphor, take it literally and answer the call.

****** violence isn’t a mistake, but it’s dealt with by an accident claims organisation.
ACC, you might think you’re right, but I disagree.
He did not trip and fall, that’s not an explanation.

****** abuse, for a while there, stole my ****** exploration.
I would go to a counsellor’s office and nervously drink herbal tea,
waiting to be seen, by ACC, an accident claims organisation.

They ask me my story, it’s quite the fixation.
It hurts for me to talk, you’re meant to help me.
A new stab in old wounds, is a poor medication.

They tell me they have to - ask about the *******,
they need to poke and **** me with questions of PTSD.
I need a mental injury, cos y’know, ACC is an accident claims organisation.

I tell them it hurts, it’s invasive. My frustration.
They tell me they’re sorry but it’s “necessary”.
I’m in pain and for what? A poor explanation.

ACC, we don’t deserve your mental mutilation,
You’re our only option, other counselling costs, we don’t have the money.
You’re meant to be a helpful organisation.
And hurting us to help us is a ****** explanation

You talk/write about pain and suddenly you’re crazy.
They tell you to heal (shut up and go quietly) because they are uncomfortable. Keep your concerns/opinions/experiences to the confines of your counsellor’s office.

Your pain on a page
is not mastery
coping
overcoming
or even reflection.

It’s just messy,
             Clean up in aisle 5!!!
the silly shop assistant girl is crying again.

If you tell me what I can and can’t read. I will break up with you.

If you forget to introduce me to people you know, repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, to the point where I wonder if you realise I’m here or I wonder if it hasn’t even occurred to you that I’ve become a blur of me and every other girl you’ve been ******* prior to me and you can’t remember which **** has been introduced. I will break up with you.

If you say before *** “just get it over with” I will break up with you.

If you say you love my ****, before you say you love me. And then you quickly say “oh no I love you too” I will ******* break up with you.

If you say the book you’re writing is the most important thing in the whole world in your life. You will be broken up with.

If you blame me for not being on my best socialising game for your birthday while I’m in chronic pain. I will break the **** up with you.











I wish you were the type of person I could still want. Cuz I thought you were and I really wanted that person.

They said to buy local so I tried to buy Dave Cull’s lung.
But he wouldn’t sell it.
They said to buy local,
So I tried to buy Michael Woodhouse’ heart,
But it was out of stock.
The shop girl told me she would check out the back.
They said to buy local so I tried to buy Lee Vandervis’ hands,
He said he’d sell them to me but I tried them out and they had no grip.
The said to buy local so I tried to buy Harlene Haynes nose,
But it was already in something else.
(she told me it was malicious of me to ask and threatened me with defamation)
They said to buy local so I tried to buy the Highlanders cauliflower ears,
so I’d have enough florets for a salad,
But it turned out they weren’t organic, so I left it.
They said to buy local so I tried
They said to buy local so I tried
They said to buy local so I tried
And I tried
And I tried
And I tried

They said to buy local
-but between the dilapidated hospital and the drafty-damp flats there were no good organs to purchase.

You think you can only have fun at other people’s expense,
I am more sad for your lack of imagination than I am angry.

All of your fun is propped up by being mean to others,
Because I am not mean, you think I have no fun.

You think stopping being mean,
Means losing all your fun,

You are so wrong,
You are so wrong.

how can we trust the university to care about us and treat us with dignity when every day we are reminded of how much the university and the New Zealand government, (the ministry of education and ministry of health) do not care about us. We are reminded every day that the university and the government do not care about us, when we are in our cold, damp housing, struggling to cover rent and power and buy food with student allowance and/or student living cost not being enough. We are reminded when our friends talk about not going to the doctors cuz they can’t afford it. we are reminded when our friends miss class because they have to work to cover costs. We are reminded when we are over burdened with assignments and stress taking semester long papers that used to be full year papers, charged double the cost and expected to do the work in half the time. We are reminded when we seek help and are told the Student Health counselling waiting list is 3 months long. We are reminded when our friends try to **** themselves from the stress and hopelessness of it all. We are reminded when university officials talk about us and treat us like we are lazy little ***** when we are tired and trying so hard. We are reminded when the university rai$e$ the fee$ by the maximum legal limit every year, we are so worn down that we can hardly voice our opposition. We are reminded when are told that special consideration for exams will only happen if someone dies or you are hospitalised. We are reminded when we are too depressed to function but not ‘depressed enough’ to warrant any academic leniency or support. We are reminded when Student Health costs are raised even though we already pay for student services through our student services fees. We are reminded when we spend all day (and a lot of the night too) in the library because our homes are not warm enough. We are reminded when we are given no choice, when we are condemned to decades of debt with the threat of imprisonment if we default on our loans. We are reminded when we sit in our cold flat and read the numbers of our debt that having our own healthy home is a lofty far off dream. We are reminded when they tell us university increases your income yet we know the job market is unstable and that studying out of the threat of poverty is no choice at all. We are reminded, we are shown, every day, that the university and the government do not care about us. We cannot trust them to care about us. The university shows us that this is a business and that there is no room for caring in a for-profit company.

But we the students (as well as the staff), we are what make this community great, not the power holders, not those most high up with their high incomes and net worth and assets and stock investments, it is our passion for learning and caring for each other and striving to make the world a kinder place for all, that makes this space and community of learning worthwhile. It has been said by many before me, WE ARE THE UNIVERSITY.

The institution will not give us the fair treatment, dignity and care that we need, so we must take it, we must demand it.

There cannot be business as usual because the university should not be run as a business in the first place,

we are people not machines and we are hurting.

I call on all students all staff, all people of the local and national community if you are concerned about staff cuts, course cuts, inadequate health care, poor responses to ****** violence, lack of commitment to environmental justice (no staunch stance against further offshore drilling) these issues are not separate, these concerns we feel so deeply in our heart that it burns, they are all connected because these atrocities come from the same beast of corporatised, neoliberal education run for-profit.


Let us join together against this atrocity as one!

it is not a hot topic, a heated issue, highly charged or a ‘controversy’
it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy.
it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy.
it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy.
it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy.
it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy.
it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy.
it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy.
it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy.
it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy.
it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy.
it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy.
it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy.
it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy.
it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy.
it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy.
it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy.
it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy.
it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy.
it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy.
it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy.
it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy. it is white supremacy.

we do not want let into the room, we want to smash the ******* walls

call it diversity not ‘decentering whiteness’ not, smashing white supremacist cis hetero patriarchy,
not THE CANON IS ******* RACIST
THE CANON IS FOR MEN BY MEN PRAISED BY MEN
FOR THE BOURGEUIS BY THE BOURGEUISE OWNED AND RUN BY THE BOURGEISE
THE CANON IS AS WHITE AS THE PAGES YOU TURN AND THE PAPER YOU WIPE YOUR *** WITH.
THE CANON IS A CLOSED ROOM WITH A BARRED DOOR
WITH QUEERS ON THE STREET NOT EVEN BOTHERING TO KNOCK
BECAUSE THEY KNOW THAT THE DOOR WILL NOT EVEN BE CRACKED OPEN IN THE SLIGHTEST.

WE DO NOT WANT LET INTO THE ROOM,YOU BUILT THE ROOM YOU OWN THE ROOM, IT IS YOUR HENCHMAN WHO CONTROL THE INS AND OUTS OF THE DOOR.

WE WANT TO SMASH THE ******* WALLS.

IF YOU DO NOT LEAVE, YOU WILL BE PART OF THE RUBBLE.

YOU WILL LEARN WHAT IS LIKE TO HAVE YOUR HOUSE BROUGHT TO THE GROUND.

liberalism rots my brain and breaks my heart

emotions are cast as a lack of objectivity needing to be overcome and cut out.

emotions are not insight they are impediment.

a threat to someone’s wellbeing and dignity is cast as a difference of opinion, that we can agree to disagree that there is no target on your back.

while you are walking up hill into the wind with your possessions rolling down the bank, the world is warped into a frame, call it a “level playing field”

as if an elite group doesn’t own and run the pitch, profit from the rent, write the rulebook and hire the referees.

My finger is strung up like ham,
I will cleaver it off
Oil the pan
And chuck it in the oven
On the table someone will complain about the bone
'I don’t like bones in my food'
I will be soothing myself,
Rubbing my stinging,
streaming stump.

Petrified would
Smoothed down by sand and time
Almost hollow like birds bone
I want to club you over the head
I will float with it, clutch it
I will be soggy, long before the water soaks all the way to the core of the tree’s bone.

i am driving to the airport in reverse, crying
aching at how lonely my spine will be, without your body
behind me
an unbound book.
the fear of empty
cold
hands
yours are always so warm.

a plane lands backwards from Iceland to Dunedin.
you arrive.
i kiss you and hug you and kiss you and hug you
and tell you goodbye.
we enter a bookshop,
“it’s your flight, petal, time to go”
we only find overpriced Sudoku books.
we look at socks.
we drink drinks, then buy them.
we go down the escalator back to front,
we take the stickers off your suitcase.
i drive back to your house with
you in the front seat, beside me.
we unpack the car,
go up the path
pat your cat goodbye
put your clothes away
your posters back on your wall.
get back into bed
we come
and then we ****.

His fingers are removed from inside me
his hand taken out of my pants
the pain fades away
until it never
happened.


I remove his ugly old tshirt
my blue lace blouse is back on
comforting against my skin
I walk out of his house.
I’ve never
been there before.


His phone number
leaves from my phone
digit
by digit.


His smothering
cigarette
beer breath
mouth
walks away from me.
He has never
touched me.


His texts fly away into nothing.
He has never
contacted me.


I have a picnic with my friends in reverse.
We regurgitate cake until it’s whole,
then take them back to our houses
out of our ovens
until it’s batter.
Just ingredients on our shelves
that can be made differently next time.


Everything happens in reverse
until it hasn’t
happened.

Until it’s better.

New Zealand culture,
a fragility,
tainted by violence.
Colonisation.

Writers have examined,
the loss of Maori land.
Less common however,
is writing concerned with
the benefits,
accruing to white people
as a result of the acquisition
of this land.

Colonisation has provided,
Economic and social advantages,
to white people,
in contemporary New Zealand.

A hierarchy,
white Western culture,
sitting uncontested,
at its pinnacle.

The cultural capital that whiteness provides.
Unearned advantages at our disposal.
Live our lives with greater ease:
Homeownership.
Health.
Education.
The ‘Justice’ System.
Institutional privilege.
A political separation.

The white New Zealand system,
designed for whites.
To get through school,
have good health,
get jobs,
get a little justice.
If the system was designed,
for Maori people
it would not be the way it is now.

Overrepresentation of Maori,
in every
negative
New Zealand
social statistic.

The persistence of *******.
Society provides greater opportunities,
to white people,
by disadvantaging those who are not.
Unacknowledged,
debilitating, racism.

Being oblivious,
sustains a belief,
in white superiority.

While factors:
socioeconomic status, gender,
sexuality, disability,
may impact the degree to which,
individual white people,
can access privilege.
On some level,
every white person,
in New Zealand
benefits from their skin.

treetops break the uniform silhouette
of the hills.
the sky is sky blue
with faintest wisp
of cloud.
like grey hair.
i am aging too.
cars race past uncaring.
******* lines the streets,
Nina Simone asks me if she moves me.
almost nothing moves me out of bed.

Getting pizza,
Carbs to soothe the anger and indignity.
Getting a takeaway box,
cuz you don't scoff it in time,
to get to class.

Walking towards class,
then turning around.
Thinking you look crazy.
You can’t go today.

You were crying in the pizza shop alone.
You were building up to hyperventilation,
as you crossed the road

You get to your car.
You can’t drive right now.
So you cry and you hyperventilate,
you hyperventilate and you cry.
You think about how people
saw you doing that on the way over
It’s embarrassing.

You ring EPS and you hang up.
You ring the crisis line but hang up.
You’re embarrassed that you’re
making a phone call but you can’t talk.

A man called Peter answers.
He mishears your name 3 times,
cuz you’re gasping.
You’re embarrassed.
You spell out your name
as you always have to.
You’ve got a weird name.

Your chest is getting tight.
Your head is getting light.
He tells you, you need to breathe.
Hyperventilating can make you pass out.
You know.

You barely comprehend what this guy Peter is saying.
But you’re following his instructions;
you’re breathing.
It’s such an achievement.
But, ****! This should be simple.
He asks you if you feel better.
You tell him you’re still worried about
What you’re worried about.

You lie down and cover your face with hair
when people you know walk past.
You hope they don’t recognise your car.

You’re driving to EPS,
You’re embarrassed.
You’re exhausted.

You take yourself and your pizza box inside.
You talk about what you’ve talked about before.
They have similar responses.
Tissues.
Breathing.

No-one knows you’re here.
You go home.
You’ve stopped crying.
You start crying again in the car.
You’re exhausted.

You cook dinner for your flatmates
They ask you how your day was.
You cringe thinking about the emails you sent
to classmates asking for their notes,
for the lectures you missed.