Time Reeling On Mina Hakmoun

Snow falling Flowers wilting

Summer sweltering

And time reeling on

I try to remember

The last time I remembered Myself

In constant comparison

A bad seed

In rotting soil

Of an unkept garden

Look up at the sky

Do you feel small?

The universe is infinite

And you get to reside here

With everything else

With snow falling Flowers wilting

Summer sweltering

And time reeling on

Dysphoria

Jackson Yates

These shirts cling too tightly to my chest. As I work my way up the garment, Buttoning one at a time.

I feel the weight of dread settling into the yet unbuttoned center of my chest.

“The shirt isn’t the issue”

My brain says on repeat as I slowly lose my breath. Standing there, slowly approaching the next button, The world around me spins, Like I was in the midst of all the major wars happening simultaneously,

The shots being fired from my eyes, ricocheting off the mirror and back to my chest, to my hips, to my slightly feminine curves.

After two years of reshaping and resculpting. After two years of rewiring and self-validating. In that mirror, I see her again.

I'm not sure if I want to run, break the mirror, or shrivel to the ground.

So I do it all at once.

But my feet are still cemented here.

Like a good soldier, I finish buttoning this shirt. This body I try to hide, Screams back at me underneath this flawlessly perfect garment. A shirt I love, and want to wear.

But she’s here, These shirts cling too tightly to her chest. And underneath can be seen the abnormally large DDs that no man should own.

So I put on another sight coffin to try to make her leave. Maybe if I suffocate her.

Maybe if I break her ribs.

Maybe if I just add another binder.

If I bind her tightly enough she will sink back inside of me, and be erased from existence.

I killed her one year, 11 months and 11 days ago.

I left her dead body on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.

There were no witnesses.

In the moment it was my decision.

I was the only one that needed to see her lose her breath and watch mine begin.

She was venom running through my veins, She was arrows sent with loving kindness from unknowing assailants.

She was the emptiness between lines. She was the aftertaste of liquor on my breath. She was the cloudy dark summer night. Yet her body is before me now. These shirts cling too tightly.