I don’t know who to believe, you say, as I deflate
after Gala Mukomolova
I don’t know who to believe, you say, as I deflate a white hole / vortex and vomit space debris. I was a child who could not believe / mecha pilots can die inside these metallic shells. I thought snails die / only if they didn’t choose the right house. Snail slime trails and trickles / from my chin as the tube leaves me and I turn to Medusa. Do you know that / in Japanese, the first part of “consciousness”¹ is “stone”?² It doesn’t matter as / you care less about each word I say. The night is always longer and the grass greener / as we debate about my existence. When you tell me she (who? me?) is lying, I don’t disappear, I turn unenterable, a white hole vortex, still vomiting space debris.
¹意識 (Ishiki)
²石 (Ishi)
PTSD at an exhibition by over-enthusiastic people about mental illness
At an exhibition by over-enthusiastic people about mental illnesses you can call yourself. There is a plastic telephone mounted on the wall. Still. Find out what a mentally ill person is hearing. The phone was either broken or I heard my thoughts blare through the speakers. The rest of the exhibition is filled with descriptions of stuff I’d do and paintings I’d make and I wonder what is my place in the exhibition. They made me and dissected me and sold me for ¥68 a ticket to college girls who all come with best friends and cups of boba tea. I have you who laugh loudly in the exhibit of the crazy and listen to people rant about love and wavy arm hairs. “If you actually called your mental illness, what would it say?” If I should hold your hand, if I should have held my hand.
Yufan (they/any) is an queer aro-spec ace-spec writer from Beijing, China. They recently graduated from Kenyon College and are currently studying English at the University of British Columbia. When not reading and writing, they volunteer at Out On the Shelves, Vancouver’s oldest queer library.