by Saoirse Palmer
1
My words are all that’s good for me,
but they slur themselves like
the insides of gelatin.
I’m a spent match so
flicker it, love,
& watch it go.
2
Stuck there, drinking
down the December rain, I considered the train tracks a bathroom mirror, a kitchen sink, a school cubicle, so there, I drank the
silent fireworks & swallowed down the
wishbone.
I can’t say I sprouted wings
like someone who breathes in the ashes
of a dying home: more like
a deer,
who watches death’s condensation
& rests its antlers on the glass
so that when the car revs its engine
the headlights look like burning stars.
There,
was my internal revolution.
3
The body is such a warm &
full place; we stuff it
to the pulp with frigidness, course & heavy words with cement for syllables
& then tear it away.
This cave I formed inside my chest
is spacious enough for us to fit — so sip some tea & giggle like a languid brain
your infection is here to stay. Like a running lyric,
like a lodged bullet, just like yourself
you made a home inside my chest
painted its walls with crescent lullabies
tucked it in & said goodnight
so inward, your words would echo through
to me.
4
Cycle it over
the permanent journey
that crawls in our bodies
it’s saying something new
something powerful—
yells thrash like crows in eruption, like bodies that
find themselves when they touch another;
drums beat
down into
soil
& send its song to the dead; streetlights are shaking the hands of the air & greeting the
earth—
breaking down, even violently, is a celebration.
Here, I am breathing recklessly into
saline, gasping for broken air & surviving so live through pain, gather the words,
& in your chest,
you’ll feel the fireworks.
Saoirse Palmer (who prefers the name Ashton) is a sixteen-year-old, transgender writer from Northern Ireland. He has been previously published in issue 2 of Catheartic Magazine, Adolescence Magazine's issue 1.5, Gypsophila Zine's volume 3 issue 1, Ink and Marrow's issue 4, Issue 5 of Spiritus Mundi Review and issue 3 of The Elyisian Chronicles. You can find him on Instagram under the username @ash_t0nes His experiences with gender dysphoria has been a major influence in his writing - seeping into the cracks of his poetry, as it does in his daily life.