i. What I mean to say is, I’m sorry. I’m sorry everything’s changed. I’m sorry my bones are dark with mourning and need, sorry I don’t feel the way I used to, sorry the light doesn’t catch in my eyes. When I was 17, I’d lie in the grass near my house and watch the sky with such wonder, it’s astonishing I didn’t implode on the spot. I was so full. Where did she go; that marvel, that gleam? I miss her terribly.

ii. What I mean to say is, what am I doing? I’m split. A part of me is hanging on so hard to the past I think I’ll die if I let go, but a part of me wants to cut those years off like a rotten leg—pretend I only just came into being, that I have always been like this. I’ve carried so much shame with me all my life, but I’m just realizing it now. Or, maybe I’m finally realizing how not okay it is. How somewhere along the line I stopped believing it was alright to call myself Writer or Poet or Author or Warrior or Brave, just because I wasn’t doing those things well enough. I read great literature so I’d have something to aspire to, fueled by the hot, strange beauty, but in doing so, I burned myself. I began to feel like an imposter among my own words. I gave up Writer and Poet and Author and Warrior and Brave, because they just weren’t mine enough. I let them belong to others. I became a spectator to myself.
        
iii. What I mean to say is, it’s a hard world. There are beautiful things, yes, moments that catch me off guard and stun me with love, but they seem to grow further and further apart. Nothing is easy. What use are those once beloved flowery words and strung-out phrases of effulgence, which now make me squirm with embarrassment? I don’t write like a child anymore. I write like someone who’s worn out, someone who just wants to slip off her shoes and rest for a while. I am trying to be okay with that. I’m trying to accept the lostness. I’m trying to exist, somehow, in this jumble of souls. I’m trying to figure out my place in it all. I used to know everything, but I don’t know anything anymore.

iv.What I mean to say is, life isn’t romantic. The human heart isn’t romantic. Romance isn’t romantic. The poets were right when they said blood was never beautiful, it was just red. I want to spin you a story of angels and upsurge and glow, but I can’t. I can’t be silver. I cannot be delicate. I can’t breathe lilacs or moonbeams, when what I really need to breathe is oxygen, right down to my belly where my soul has clenched itself tight. I cannot live like poetry, though I tear myself apart trying. I can’t.

v. What I mean to say is, I’m Still Here. Even though it feels like I’m not. Even though I go home and wash the dishes and stand in the dark watching the skyline under its field of stars while this gnawing, unfillable pit within me writhes to be heard. I’m still here, writing these flawed sentences, wondering at the meaning of everything. The world isn’t familiar anymore, and neither am I, but I still have some things. I have my voice. My resilience. A body that sobs and laughs. Love. Clouds and water and comets and bees. The sky. The earth. All of it.

she woke up that morning
and the layers has started to peel back again
she picked at them
exasperated and exhausted
she thought she was done transforming for now
she had just grown accustomed to this new self

she was tired from growing
looking around at the molted skin scattered around
the toxic, previously inescapable thoughts
freshly wrung from her mind
the remnants of self love rekindled
carefully tended into a warm, healthy fire again
the memories finally sorted
returned gently to their rightful place in her mind
placed gingerly in their box to accumulate dust
before she would return to them again someday
air them out with a disconnected nostalgia
that can only come with time

and that was when she felt it in her bones
a premonition
an understanding that this was reality
that change would be constant from now on

she had to ground herself in the knowledge
that it would be okay
to relieve the anxiety
of remaining in emotional purgatory
to quell the fear
that she would never feel normal again

so now
when the answers evaded her
and the newfound familiarity that she clung to
melted away with the peeling layers
she took a deep breath
and patiently kept searching

"Aren't you now tired of that green?
different from the zeitgeist once was
the ****** pulsation existed all along with me!
I can see it in the movement  of yours
when I  deep kiss you, not there, you are!
it's too long, our liaison, my love listen,
now it's time for a change, haven't you
seen the clouds in quick changing formations?
Yes, rest you need and a period of leisure
would do you good.You have to don a hue
to suit to to the mood, and yellow it is"
The setting sun,languidly to the leaf said aloud.
She felt the relief, she unhurriedly received
his words  purple tinted.pointing the direction.

The mountain wind, when the leaf  was green,
an intense lover, moved her,always.
A leaf callow and green in the wind,
passion personified, during the gale she was
the aggressive partner, demanding more,
"You are hanging here for long,on this branch,
knowing all, now time to let go, hear the music
permeating through dust and clouds and lives
transform yourself, you have danced enough
with me here, change pace, let go, begin
a journey new and find, what the cosmic hum
tells to every single cell, and what's in the end,
get ready to take newer forms from now on my love"

Wind took her by hand and she let go every thing
and naked to the soul, she jumped in to the deep below,
a valley, in ferment, flowers, fruits and leaves
in abundance, stood with bated breath,
beckoning, welcoming, cheering the fallen leaf,
the last dance it was,with the wind and sun,
in whispers the wanton wind told her" time to go,
feel light and explore, discover the secrets still left"

Earth, red and fertile was much pleased, smiled at her,
"Come down beloved, here I lie in wait, impatient,
this is your bed, not a minute late you are, here
as before in the appointed hour,you are aware
at any time you have to end up as the salt of the earth,
you'll love it here as much you did on a flowering branch,
bit by bit like the fragments of a cloud in blue sky,
you will become one with me; the fecund muddy earth,
new seeds with a vision encrypted inside will fall on you
get nourished by what your love donates and would sprout.

Gendering Woman *******

Beautiful, anatomical part //  Ugly, anatomical part
Natural, pleasurable             //   Burdensome, loathsome
Female Symbolic                //    Femme Symbolic
MALIGNANT                             HEALTHY

fearful, tearful, wretched     //  joyful, hopeful, euphoric,
bereft, wept, grieving          //  embryonic, rapt, relieving
leaving, loss                         //  believing, gain
m a y b e - d e a t h                                            r e - b i r t h
                                                   BI-LATERAL
                                             MASTECTOMIES
Operating Theatre

SURGEON                                         ANAESTHETIST
cleaning/ cutting/ knife/ scalpel   //   doping/ unconscious/ airway
blood / tissue                                 //   hypotension
loss/ damage                                 //   shock
drains                                             //   sinus rhythm
stitches                                           //   pain deadening
tight binding                                 //   reversal drugs
                                    
POST-OPERATIVE
a l i v e                                                a w a k e

draining, bound & stitched               draining, bound & stitched
                                            DRAINED
    ­                                   ~ UNBOUND
                                       -- UNSTITCHED –

Empty chest                                                    Flat Chest
FREEDOM from Disease                               FREEDOM from Dis-ease


© M.L.Emmett

I'm not changing;

I'm simply becoming more myself

In last night’s episode, a feeling washed over me

Lonely and alone, I broke down

And within those few moments of emotional inertia

I wept for everything and everyone;

For Prince and Bowie and all the others

For the planet

For my loved ones

and all of their problems I can’t solve

But not for myself, I wouldn’t allow it

I deny myself everything I need;

A person to love and be loved by

A shoulder to cry on

Permission to be weak

Help when it’s needed

A part of me died

and I reflected on how trivial it is

always making things difficult for yourself

Questioned why my life is so hard

As if it’s all some joke everyone is in on

They’re laughing and rooting against me

while I fall back down each time I get back up

Does anyone understand what it’s like in my shoes?

How can they when I don’t let anyone in?

Hell, I don’t even understand my own weary soul

So star crossed and aimless

and pulled in every direction

Searching….searching….unable to find solace

Looking for home in people and places and things

Put a noose around my heart,

hung it for all to see

There is no love for one so smart and strong

There is no place for one so resistant to belong

There is no hope, or so it seems

Impatiently waiting for someone to prove me wrong

To cut these ties

To free me from myself

To make me feel alive

Because **** it, I’m just like a beautiful flower

I thrive in the right environment

I will flourish and bloom

and grow into the best version of myself

Stable, no insecurity

My fruits will nurture you in return

I will love you like you’ve never been loved before

Baby, the brightest diamonds and pearls are made over time

The future’s gonna be good to me

Chin up, buttercup -

with death comes new life