Tess McGill
A Poem
Her eyes stick and burn, they sting, as though from smoke
And her muscles spasm and it feels like it must be serious
She forgets to wear the right underwear and her thighs chafe
And she can feel her breasts press against a button and pop
Her dress is shorter than she remembered and rides too high
And that training video on discrimination flashes in her mind
On weekdays she can’t wake, lashes cloying with grit and mucus
On weekends, still tired, brain bleary with static, she wakes at six
She thinks sometimes that there’s things she might want to do
Productive, meaningful, achieving-your-goals kind of things
At the end of the day her toes have fossilised into a stone curl
A small hole in her tights weltering an otherwise vice-like grip
She thinks that ten minutes a day is better than nothing at all
She thinks that a journey of a hundred miles begins with a step
She pulls off her boots in the train and pulls the material loose
The seam shifts and festers red flesh into her foot as she walks
She stares at her charcoals, sees a kaleidoscope or nothing
She goes to the gym and thinks another day she’ll run faster
Emails slide and snap into her inbox, subject headings taunting
She swallows tears, trailing adrenaline like poison, heart racing
She feels dizzy, head swimming, nauseated, every finger aching
She buys a can of coke, googles symptoms, thinks she’s dying
Late at night, despite the stinging, she is fixed to her screen
Addicted to what might be next, to what might be enough
As the clock counts forwards, she hates herself and can’t stop
All the sins she forces herself to eat, yet the scrolling won’t cease
She hears from someone, or reads (she confuses that a lot)
That the Japanese have a name for this and that feels right
