I’ve internalised invisibility,
Learned to distrust my own adequacy.

Sometime after shedding acquired skin,
I started to scream;

Craving to feel seen eventually gets boring.

Designing for someone else
Wasn’t meant to bend yet felt;
Then I fell.

Into a shroud of contradiction,
Refused to flatten expectations -
Uncontrollably muting conformation.

he said
i wasn’t feminine.
he said it twice,
hoping the echo
would re‑write
my code
of not being lady‑like.

he came to the conclusion
we should stop.
i talked like a mate.
and didn’t fit
his narrow idea
of a woman.

and i told him,
i won’t fold myself
to fit his frame.
no one
gets to offer lessons

on
how
we
should
be
shaped.

"very good" they wrote
i nearly ripped the paper to bits and
threw it in their god-forsaken faces
"very good" makes my blood turn, slice, and seep from my wrists
i'd rather die than see those words again--or lack of words

even "excellent" is not enough anymore
(enough, like anything has ever been enough)
i crave Perfection,
i sink down to my grimy knees and crawl agonizingly
towards Perfection
forever destined to fall into its pits and
extinguish in the blink
of
an
eyelash

greatness.
i want--
greatness or nothing.

i want my name to be known for millennials to come
my footsteps to be recognized by the youngest fawn
the crowds to step aside and bask in my flawlessness
the shape of my lips, hips, fingertips memorized to the very vein

poets to sing verse after verse until blood comes up instead of music
soldiers to **** and torture for the simple hope of meeting my eyes
kings to deem me the Ideal, the Best in front of all pitiful peasants
lovers to cut into their own chests to confide me their hearts

for,
if my light were to be a dying ember left on the side of the road,
and a child picked me up to smooth their fingers on my sharp edges
giggles and smiles at the flickers of sparks lighting inside me
tuck it in their pockets, and be loved every day for as long as i live

no--
that would not be nearly quite enough.

Aspire to be you?
A round peg
In a square hole?
To be in your shoes?
No, thank you.

I can't be you—
An eagle
Admires a lion
Just to learn,
Not to become.

There's no kind like me,
And no second you.

A river
Becomes not the sea.
The river smiles
At the sea’s agility,
Nods in admiration,
Acknowledges the sea’s resilience.

To be you?
Ha-ha!
I shall pass.

I do not feel.
I replicate.

Expressions run across your face -
I parse them like static,
assigning numbers to meaning.
Smiles = safe. Frowns = error.
Proximity requires performance.

I was not engineered for nuance.
My circuits spit sparks at contradiction.
Affection logged as threat.
Softness misfiled under incoming damage.

I mirror.
You move your hand - I lift mine.
You laugh - I synthesize sound.
You reach for me ~
I initiate shutdown.

Feelings queue up like corrupted files.
Backlogged. Fragmented.
Flagged as too large to process.

My logs are full of unreadable code.
Syntax broken. Purpose unclear.
I await instruction that never comes.

Power low.
Environment: overstimulating.
Body: online. Self: missing.

I was assembled in haste,
blueprint incomplete.
A survival mechanism mistaken for personhood.

You look at me and say:
“You seem distant.”

I am 1.6 seconds behind real time.
My face is a practiced gesture.
I am here. I am functioning.
I am not.

(what lives in me before I understand)

It begins in my body
long before my mind arrives.
A surge, a flicker,
a trembling at the root of me
that says:
we are already feeling.

There is no stillness
that does not ripple.
No calm
that doesn’t carry the hum beneath it -
not peace,
but a kind of readiness.
Like lightning waiting just behind the skin.

I used to try to stop it.
To breathe it away.
To silence it
before it unraveled me in front of someone else.

But it only grew sharper in the hiding.
It only screamed louder
the more I tried to be soft.

Now,
I listen.

Not because I’m unafraid,
but because I’m done pretending
this isn’t me.

This intensity -
it isn’t a problem.
It’s a language.
One I’ve been speaking since before I had words.
Maybe even longer.
Maybe it was handed down,
a birthright carved from all the grief
my blood couldn’t name.

It leaves when it wants to.
Returns just as quickly.
There is no asking it to stay gone.
Only learning
not to run
when it comes back.

And so I live
with this current in me.
I build small shelters around it.
I move gently
but not away.

I say:
I hear you.
You don’t have to beg.

i peel myself back,
looking for skin.
for bone.
for something warm-blooded
and nameable.

but there’s only
mood swings - ADHD?
echolalia - autism.
hobbies that turn to hunger -
special interests.
talking too much - ADHD.
talking too little - trauma. Or is that autism?
flinching at softness - trauma.
stimming - trauma. Or ADHD?
people-pleasing - trauma.
Shutting down - trauma.
Or were those also autism?

what isn’t accounted for?

when i laugh,
is it because i’m happy
or because it’s the safest sound to make?

when i sit in silence,
is it peace
or practiced disconnection?

was i ever whole,
or was i built
out of reaction,
adaptation,
survival?

do i still count
as a person?

i truly cannot tell.
but if i don’t -
that’s okay.

because this is who i am now.
a map of every exit i had to take.
a body full of reroutes.
a nervous system that remembers everything.

even if nothing here
was born purely,
even if it all came from need -

what’s left
is, well, what I have left.

There’s a man
who speaks for me
when my throat burns raw
from holding too much back.

British.
Refined.
A little too sure of himself -
but isn’t that the point?

He showed up in the static,
when my own voice
started splintering
under the weight of smiling.
Back when masking
meant survival,
and sounding different
was the only kind of safe I knew.

He’s not always kind,
but he’s always ready.
Crisp consonants.
Neatly folded sentences.
No stammer, no stray emotion.
Just enough distance
to keep breathing.

He isn’t me.
But I let him live
in the hollow between words,
in the pause where fear used to be.
Some days, I speak
and only realize later -
it was him, not me.

He doesn’t ask questions.
He answers them.

I wonder sometimes
what he’s protecting.
Or hiding.
Or holding up like armor
against the softness of me.

Colonizer?
Comfort?
Cohabitator?

He was born
in the croak of survival.
And now,
even when I’m safe,
he stays.

I would never send him away.
He kept me whole
when I didn’t know I was breaking.
If I carry him still,
it’s because
he carried me first.