By Maria Iliffe-Wood
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07 Feb, 2021
I was queered, right from the get go. Do not place bets on my capitulation. The purse that is my soul is vacuous, empty, bereft of the queen’s shilling. Traitorous to t he iniquity, this den shalt be mine sayeth the Lord. I, of little consequence, obdurate the facetious backslide of cretinous mannequins that block my way. Struts that stiffen under my resolve and create a charged barricade for this particular pound of flesh. I, crucible to the rapacious, jaundiced from my inauspicious beginning, reptiled into an ossification of life’s first lesson. I’m lathered with the feces that arrived with my existence, that yellow gruel that ran through my veins, traces of which never left, despite the medical flushing designed to cleanse this unclean form. The excrement continues to float like oil on the life blood of this carbon copy chattel, shackled to my brain. I, tormented, tied myself to that jarred scream as I ripped, tore and expunged myself through the torture that maternal desire could never see past. I arrived to shrieks of denial, derogated, subjugated, incarcerated by the hands that gave me life, yet bruised my neck as they choked the breath from my lungs. Generosity leaves a foul stench in my mouth, in the pit of my stomach, in the hidden corner of my existence, where I crouch, foetal curled into myself, straitjacketed by my own arms, cowering, shivering, blistering from the heat of the flames of hell, engulfed by the shards of the devil, that come with a cacophonous decapitation and drowning in my own shit. I cannot reach out, cannot stretch my arms in supplication, cannot be saved from this intrepid asphyxiation by the excreta formulated in the bile of my non-existence. I cannot open my eyes to what cannot be seen. I lie in the wretched darkness, terrified of the malfeasance that may exist if I were to shift my perspective to that which I have ignored for so long. I had it triple-boxed. Superglued with the life-force designed for bigger, better things. I have cast it overboard with the dregs, and live in the bitter ministrations of closed precincts of possibility. Abject I clutch at straws. Pathetic, tragic, I pray for my release. Contemptible, debauched, quarried, I whimper in the hope of salvation. Quid pro quo, rapacious, ravenous, greedy for recognition, I beg forgiveness for my sin, my only sin, the sin that can never be vindicated, the sin that sears through my heart and blackens my soul, the sin that not even God’s love will overlook. The sin of my being born.