Tin Cups

TW: This is me poetry-ing out my cPTSD struggles with the recent Epstein file releases

The kettle clicks off, and for a moment

so do I.

I’m thinking about nothing.

I’m thinking

Did you torture her?

I forget I’m making tea, but I’m reminded

by the tea

it pulls me into focus, I see the box, so… I make tea.

my brain is an animal, and I’m an animal

between its teeth

I am trembling, and drinking tea

drinking tea won’t help me sleep

I am looking in the mirror

I realise

my reflection arrives late

I am driving to the dentist

I’m making tea

I realise late.

A voice asked me a question

I realise

when it’s asked a second time

straight ahead, I say

can’t miss it, I say

Did you torture her?

I also hear myself say

I check if the door is locked, by opening it

but I realise and I lock it and I check it

by opening it

It’s only language, just words

Just don’t think about the words

Did you–

boil the kettle? For tea. I’ll make tea.

Did you-

know that language is a human language?

I’ll make that tea.

Did you-

notice my hands

five days of this, these hands

shaking all the time,

these hands

are my hands but I

can’t

control this

A strip of tape traces the line around my skull

I wrap my senses up in gauze

I make tea

my stomach turns

silt-thick

heartsick

and wet earth heavy

Loved the torture video

pull the tape away

feel the air changes its weight.

and the skin comes up with it.

fingertips and flesh walls

that I climb up, and then claw

drag my insides out, bleed raw

I would crawl, if I could

out from under myself

or

back into myself

I keep losing the thread and forgetting myself

Tea. I think.

I am making tea, I think.

But I am clenched between the incisors,

of something with no name

I hate this fucking planet

I hate torture

I hate tea

You are not supposed to love torture

Tea. I’ll make the fucking tea.

Did you torture her?

Well, did you? Fucking, did you

torture her?

this question

is not my question

its not even a question

at all

because I already know

you

Loved the torture video.

That is something I can never unknow.

I’ve got the ants of your skin crawling under my own

and the sin of your flesh stuck like sap to my bones

great heaps of them

I’d rip the skin from them

skin the nerves from them

if I could

I’d destroy it all

your life

and my own

just to not know, that you

Loved the torture video

I am watching a video, on instagram

I realise

how billionaires email each other

It’s about you

I realise

“Wow, great time at the torture party

on your pedo island,”

it begins

The video is so stupid.

so unbelievably, incredibly stupid.

and I’m laughing.

I read the comments

ten thousand tin cups

tapped against the prison bars

and I realise

there is a person still here inside

This is serious, someone says

as if seriousness is a lid

and a box

we must fit

as if we weren’t already suffocating

as if I’m not already laughing

as if

my lungs aren’t full of it, fresh air breathing free again

and it’s so incredibly stupid

so unbelievably, incredibly stupid

but I’m laughing

and the laugh finds the tremor

that’s been wobbling through my hands

locks on to it

the other side of it

hand

held

against hand

the tremor finds a metre

and the metre finds me back

and for the first time in two fucking weeks

I can feel myself relax

it’s stupid

so unbelievably stupid

so stupid I can breathe again

for one second

for one second I can feel my throat is really my own

for one second

the hand

grasped

around it

is warm like my own, for one second

I don’t feel so completely alone

it’s like the horror

had me up teetering

on tip toes

trying to sneak my way around it

just to gather up my

clothes

and now Im laughing

for one second

one second, just to know

that we can still hold something together

even if

only

a dumb joke

there are no good words for this,

so we pass the bad ones back and forth

we say the bad words

the worst

and we laugh about them

taking turns

to take the weight of it all

one lungspan at a time

like the current in my hands

at last finding a path to ground