Self-Ashtualisation

Dear friend of friend of friend of acquaintance, I am sending you this pseudo-letter via Messenger, which I’ll delete A minute before your 5.55pm post-post-post inspirational post About, according to your promise in your last live broadcast, The danger of self-stealing, of all things, Before you could turn me into a block of butter with that block button, To inform you without my own consent that last night, vegetated as I was in my dream, Every (other) part of you, a mere stranger, turned into my strictest secondary school teacher, My formerly-bi-but-now-formally-bye-tongued teacher, Head to toe, semi-tongueless, Except your surprisingly accepting, alarmingly righteous left hand.   They signed solemnly, your left hand and the strictest teacher’s right, Apparently having a serious walk-and-talk on how to eat what’s left Of my scared, stealthy behaviour alive, How to turn my chewed mischief into some golden chicken-winked Wingless nuggets of wisdom Af

Listen. Don’t interrupt but let him interrupt. Pretend it’s normal, not hurtful, when he speaks over you only to repeat himself. But if you can’t pretend that your heart is not in pain, Two options remain: You can either feel that protruding scar but pretend it’s no bother When he blesses himself, tells himself you’ll forget and goes on to forget. Nothing. No one understands. Never him. That’s what you get. The other option is to take action Speak up, ask why he makes you feel unheard, and how, why and where in the world is that called love? In which case he’ll say, ‘Darling, stop wearing those radioactive kid gloves. They make you feel unloved. It’s normal. Not me. I’m normal.’   Expect his answers to your questions to be empty monosyllables Or better, don’t ask any because apparently He doesn’t have a split split second, we repeat, a split split second To spare, Evidently too busy occupying himself with despair, worn chairs, and pairs and pairs

To be a-mused by a muse Is no laughing matter As the aspiring-respiring-perspiring writer Is charged with the muse-ic, electric shock of dismissal When the muse gives up on its charge Or the writing/the charged decides to unplug herself From that guardian-angelic muse’s Delightful-painful Jolting electric slaps   But to be un-a-mused by a muse Is similarly grating, jarring ‘Electric shocks on your teeth’ sort of jarring Especially when the beginning novelist Plans to submit to the convulsive therapy Executed by the muse-turned psychiatrist Whose medication aims To make the writer spit the truth, Coat the spat truth on her fingertips And teleport it onto the doc-prescribed Word doc. .