intimacy in verse

isn’t it funny that when we try to say ‘i am hungry’ in other languages, it, instead, directly translates to ‘i have hunger.’ (ex: spanish —> tengo hambre; or dutch —> ik heb honger) it makes more sense to me when we can turn that into a hunger for an emotion or feeling. or shit, even a person or people.

i have hunger for you.

language is funny. some of my friends declare proudly that they are “words of affirmation bitch[es]” but in my three decades of life, i’ve learned to see where and when actions and behaviour behind them bear weight.
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i’ve done a lot of stupid shit.

that includes falling in love with people through their words alone, nary a trace of their actual identity behind the computer screen. i don’t regret it, but only so much nuance can be discerned through the written word. there is no quiver in a voice that might hint at fear, no warm gaze burning through your soul, no blush creeping upon cheeks.

strange to recall when a younger, more innocent me held a sense of such sheer romanticism, but i know better now. the greatest thing out of those failures was an introduction to erotic intimacy, and in turn, the love and appreciation i have for the flesh vessel i occupy.


with each individual, i understand the gravity of sharing that type of love. each one helped me learn that first times are clumsy and awkward. the messiness of limbs tangled up in each other, sometimes trying to fit pieces where they traditionally don’t belong and discovering that— a-ha! maybe this is where it fits. we would Goldilocks our way through any technical or logistical issues, but tore ourselves apart over the emotional intimacy required to move forward.

often, i ended up walking a separate path and away from them.
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speaking so frankly about intimacy makes me wish it was fair to share my whole, messy history. this isn’t a diary. people haven’t consented. i’ve learned over time that it’s just better to leave it a mystery, it’s no one else’s business to know the details of demise.

half of the time, i don’t remember them.

elie wiesel once wrote that “the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.” at this point in my life, i am too old and rich in abundant, loving relations for rallying and hating someone. they no longer register on my radar in their current form— because now, we are total strangers. consequently, the love i held for these people is still a truth— but it’s shifted shapes and settled into love for the relationship we shared.

part of my adult understanding of relationships stems from my spiritual practice. instead of deities, i worship the individual connections i make— at least the ones that i deem important. some of those include chthonic entities and beings, but also the astral and otherworldly reside here too, in my heart. i also think of Buddhist teachings: that our lives are constantly shifting, we are not static beings by any means. who i am today is not who i will be tomorrow.
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this sense of impermanence colours my life.
but so do the scars.

whenever i talk to my therapist about baggage, she mentions that “we do not leave childhood unscathed.” upon letting these words sink in, i note the way my breath rises and falls through each interaction with someone new— i feel my heart beat out of my chest and time stops as i try to discern if it’s trauma-addled brain, or if it’s the pheromones and adrenaline coursing through my veins.

developing intimacy with others at this stage of my life turns me into a walking contradiction: i crave authentic connection, the kind where you can get lost in conversation for hours without much pause. however, when it blossoms naturally, i find myself running away, fearful of the unrequited and unknown.

people often lament about being “too much” and how that’s a fear of many. what is the too-much-ness if not restrained in a container? how can that notion expand itself past boundaries?

i have been told i am too much,

yet also never enough.
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much of my work with intimacy revolves around building better, more sustainable and equitable relationships with those around me. my ethos surrounding my spiritual practice is to have a good death, we must live our lives well and in good relation with others and the world around us. while i don’t believe we can interact and develop intimacy with each person who crosses our paths, i am hopeful that the ones i choose to grow with are appreciative of the time and care i place into them.

remember when i said that language was funny? that when we say we are hungry in any other language (besides English,) it’s possessive and it has a hold over us, figuratively. i have hunger.

i understand caring for relationships in the same manner. hunger fuels the motivation behind such fiercely inquisitive relational development. a partner of mine thanked me for the fierceness and passion behind my interpersonal interactions and while it triggered me, it helped me understand that hunger is a basic human instinct. if i pine over someone, the emotional highs and lows are going to feel more fraught. my desperation for connection is more palpable and can be felt through the reverberations of my actions.

instead of seeing it as a bad thing, as a maladaptive response, it is a reframing of “you are starving for basic human connection.” i crave intimacy in all its forms. it is a human right and necessity. i will no longer bend to the whims of others and their criticisms if they do not understand what it is like to live with this deficiency, this primal need for connection. we deserve healthy, safe relationships of all kinds.

let me have hunger for you.

by Christa Lei

ROUKIA ALI’S “SPELLING ME”

*Reader*

During the interview that landed me my dream job as a magazine staff writer with the university’s on-campus publication, I was asked if there was a specific moment or writer that made me want to be an author. My reply was that reading books that made me feel seen as a child made me want to grow up contributing to that canon. In a literary world that consistently reminded me I was a minority, reading books like "Dork Diaries", written by a Black woman, or "Thea Sisters" and identifying with Pamela amidst that diverse cast of characters gave me hope in reclaiming pride in my identity. I have always believed that reading informs writing because it’s a practice in empathy—connecting with so many different perspectives and reaching people of all backgrounds with my own work is something that wouldn’t have been possible if I grew up without reading books that proved I could be seen and that I could succeed.

*Overthinker*

Six years after it happened, I told my father I was going to write about his heart attack for my first-year introductory creative writing course, and he told me to do that, I needed to be ready to die. At eleven years old, death came close and pressed upon me like a warm hand, urging me to believe in it as I spent afternoons wiping tears away to focus on my father’s breathing yet unfamiliar shape sleeping in the hospital bed. Though he recovered courageously, I always felt I hadn’t matured past that age—I contemplate in the dark sometimes about any time in my life where I felt ready to go, and I come up empty—it’s the joke you breathe into the air, “I could die happy!”; it dissolves as if it never was. 

I still wrote the story, but it made me realise that I wouldn’t be able to die until I had cherished everyone I possibly could, to the point where death could do nothing to erase them from my mind.

*Ugly*

I was the only black girl in my grade at my elementary school until the sixth grade. I didn’t remember thinking less of myself for it until I was conditioned to. It became a process of implicit secrecy—waiting during the birthday sleepovers at my white friends’ houses until the parents went upstairs and darkness sagged into the cool basement air to slip the bonnet over my head. Eating my lunch in the back of the class like that would disguise the smell. In sixth grade, my best friend came—natural hair out, Afrobeats on blast. 

We’re late on the way to a friend’s house for an afternoon hangout, belting along to Aya Nakamura on the aux, and we reclaim the stereotypes in between the lyrics—Black people are fashionably, laughably late—yet we’re teenagers like anyone else. Shame whirls out the open windows.

*Kia*

The burden of being named after the grandmother I never met is still something I contend with, so in grappling with her legacies, I halved them and manifested my own. There is an intimacy in introducing her first, and then this version of myself I’m growing into, which I hope honours her. When I revisited Alberta during the first winter break since moving to Toronto for university, “Kia” carved out a space for me in the town I thought I outgrew.

“Kia!” My friends scream as I tackle them in the rec center, brushing my face across countless necks and cheeks, my laugh high and squealing like my sneakers against the linoleum floors. Kia, you’re home.

*Introvert*

Years spent huddled in libraries, writing in solitude, and sitting with watching eyes at family gatherings have left me “quiet”, as people say, whereas I prefer “observant”. I took this same reputation to school, so it came as a surprise to everyone when I was elected to read self-written poetry at my high school graduation, in front of thousands. There’s a confidence in sharing my work, knowing that it’s the realest part of me, that bleeds into my social capabilities after readings—I’m not battling anxiety talking to people because I’ve already presented everything they need to know about me through my words. They’re the best conversations because there’s no small talk—I don’t have to sit and watch and linger in silence because something I said impacted someone enough that they want me actively participating in the conversation. It’s the only recognition I crave more than any award.

*Ambitious*

My mother says I can never be happy because I am an obsessive comparer—I have jealous eyes paired with a congratulatory voice that tries to be happy for other people without gouging my own eyes out. I don’t dislike being called ambitious—I bite back that it only means sooner or later, I’ll get what I want. But what do I want? is often the question when the high of victory subsides like a slow, rolling wave collapsing at the shoreline.

At my first creative nonfiction showcase, after reading my personal essay, I was asking my friend from the other section of the same course who did not read for the showcase what would have convinced her to. I was expecting a typical answer like “if I wrote something I was particularly proud of” or “if I had practised a specific piece more.”

“If what I wrote was something I thought could inspire someone else,” she said, and then smiled at me. “I really liked your piece for that reason.”

Ah, I realised, hugging my piece to my chest—the one I read in the hopes of getting more confident at reading—she had helped me, receiving it so well. There it is.

by Roukia Ali

I think I’m losing my mind… oh wait nvm

How the fuck do people do this shit? When do you have time to unwind? I would say sorry for my language but swearing is the only way I feel these days, haven't got anymore energy for anything else.

Do you ever look at yourself, like truly look deep into your own eyes in a mirror and realise that you probably aren't worthy of what you have? You aren’t smart or lovable, the only reason you've made it this far is bobbing along on the pity of others.

You aren't good at your job, look you can barely spell, your grammar is shit and who would listen to you anyways. You call yourself a creative and this is what you do? You were too weak and not talented enough to be an actual writer, so you've taken to working for the man. Anytime you call yourself a creative, an angel dies and a starving artist gives up because they are in the same category as you.

Your parents don't like you. Look at how different you are from the rest of your family they probably don't even want you near, they wouldn't miss you if you left. Just picked up one day and was in the wind by dawn, if you sacrificed yourself to martyrdom right now no one would miss you. They would just be relieved you aren’t taking up space anymore. Even your friends wouldn't mourn, your death would affect no one and you will be forever forgotten leaving nothing in your wake, no legacy, no good memories, just one less space in the cemetery.

Oh, I’m just bleeding again.

by Giesle Thompson

The ins and outs of me

Pink is a soft color that brightens the day, because sometimes Red is too harsh. The pink tutus that if combined with jeans looks like a fashion disaster. Pink used to surround me and enveloped me in a cloud of cotton candy. One that I had to thread through as I tried to learn the ins and out of the world and society. But I was six.
Pink was what I saw when I woke up and saw the princess doll my mother scraped through to try to get me something normal to play with.
Pink was like a thorny teddy bear that I hugged tightly.
Blue was like a fresh new breath of air. Like when you chew a minty gum and then drink water. It felt like I was soaring through the skies but with limits.
Blue wasn’t a color that my parents liked. The blue toy car that suddenly got ‘lost’ the next day after I had gotten it. And later found in the trash bin destroyed.
It wasn’t the dolls they gave me, why did I need a toy car? Not the baby dolls that sat in my room untouched.
Blue was too brash for a girl as delicate as me. Blue was too much of a violent color like a bruise that I would receive if I were to play soccer. But blue was just perfect for a girl with a boyish voice like me.
I was eight when I almost threw out all my dresses and skirts as I hated how they looked on me. My cousin's quinceanera is when things began to spiral. As I stared at my cousins and saw how beautiful and feminine they looked in their body. How confident they felt in their bodies. How they wore their clothes and took care of themselves. And how lady-like they acted.
I was eight when I thought something was wrong with me. Was something wrong with me? Was it wrong that I preferred blue over pink sometimes. How sometimes I hated being called a girl when I didn’t feel like one.

I was eight when my parents lectured me for three hours about how I was a girl and that I shouldn’t go around telling people that I didn’t want them to call me that. And I shut down for a while. Holding on to the thorny pink, silently crying as I realized I was being dressed up as something I wasn’t to every party. When my parents told me to speak in a higher pitched voice in order to be ‘cuter’.
The dreaded dresses and skirts. How I was prohibited from playing soccer with my cousins, because it wasn’t lady-like. How I couldn’t play with his video games because it wasn’t perceived as feminine.
That continued till I was in middle school. Where for a reason I started going around calling myself Alex. Not because I hated my name. But because of the duality. And neutrality.
Middle school was where blue was prevalent to my life. When I ‘accidentally’ got gum stuck my hair so that my parents would cut it. And I tried to get rid of the automatic switch my tone of voice had whenever someone other than my parents were nearby.
Blue was there when I could sit on a chair without having to cross my legs. Blue was prevalent when I wore jeans and a T-shirt instead of a skirt and shirt.

Then High school came around and Pink began to battle with Blue. Clashing every once in a while. I punched and kicked Pink each time I thought about it. My relationship with Blue was tight. And I wasn’t going to betray blue as I had fought for years to experience just a second of it.
It was a bloody battle of custody over my body, it caused many sleepless nights and late night cries as I lost myself. And I felt like a fraud. Like an imposter. . Was it wrong to like both

Pink and Blue? I had to choose one. I had to choose one. One had to be it. Just one. One. One. One. One. One. God dammit it had to be one. And how much I hated it.
As my parents forced me to be with Pink, and my heart yearned for Blue. And society forced Pink, and I just wanted a moment with Blue.
As I tried to reject Pink with all my heart because I had to choose Blue. Because I couldn’t just abandon Blue, not after they showed me freedom. A freedom I didn’t really experience with Pink, at least not until the end of my high school education.
In my mind I told myself I was with Blue while my parents thought I was with Pink. But at least the mental struggle was gone. I was with Blue. And if I was okay with Blue, that was all that mattered.
My last year of high school is when Pink came back to me. When I started to get lured in by Pink. The beautiful skirts, the dresses, and the make up. Which no longer felt like they were being forced on me, but was I betraying Blue?
There were days and nights when I hated the feminine parts on me and I wanted them gone. Where they disgusted me and where I felt like I just did not belong. I was with Blue. Then there were moments when I loved them. I loved how the skirts and dresses fit, and got excited over makeup, upsetting me for rejecting Blue.
Blue was the freedom I fought for for years, it was the freedom I fought towards with my parents as they called me unusual and weird, as they got mad at me for not wanting to be with Pink. To embrace Pink. Was I about to just reject it all?
Did I suffer for years, rejecting Pink, only to reject Blue too? It was to the point that I didn’t want to see myself in the mirror. I didn’t want to see Pink or Blue.

They were just colors, but why did they have to make my heart hurt. Why did they have to stab me in the chest with the expectations of society. Why did I start to hate my short hair, why did I hate the make up.
Am I a fake?

I am nobody.
Who am I?
What was my Identity?
Am I a fraud to society?
Was I betraying my past self who fought hard to finally be with Blue?
These constant questions made me spiral to the point of depression where I couldn’t even answer my name.
What was the point? Who was I?
It wasn’t until my freshman year of college when I got tired of myself. Tired of feeling this way. Why couldn’t I be with both Pink and Blue? Sometimes I wanted to be with Blue and that was fine. Sometimes I wanted to be with Pink and that was valid.
It took months before I became comfortable with these feelings without feeling like an outsider, or like I was betraying myself. It took months before I was comfortable with wearing skirts and dresses, and wearing makeup. I got comfortable with wearing Blue.
Genderfluid. Genderfluid. Pink or Blue. It didn’t matter. It took years to comprehend that sometimes I hated the body I was born with, and sometimes I loved it. How I felt feminine sometimes, and masculine other times.

It took years to realize that it wasn’t that I hated Pink. It was just that being strictly with Pink felt suffocating. Being a female strictly was suffocating when some days I didn’t want to be that. It took years to accept that it was okay.
That it was okay to feel this way, even though sometimes it felt like it was not.
Now it doesn’t matter. Whether I am with Pink or Blue. I can be with both. Some days I may be with Pink more, and in others I may be with Blue. Or some days we are with Purple. My name no longer sends me into a spiral of depression, and I come to love dearly. But there are moments when A.C is what I prefer the most, and become more confident in.
To many they are just colors. But to me they were what caused me to question how I was to identify as.
Pink is no longer suffocating. It’s as free as Blue. And I wouldn’t want it any other way.

by Anahi Cabrera

NEGATIVE SPACE

…

when you see a “weed” spiraling up between a concrete fault line, do you ask yourself a question. the same question i have while smoothing aloe vera over my overheated cheeks in the summertime: “Why are you here? You, specifically.”

if i could dig a shovel into that crack, free the roots and worms, and repave the streets with the preserved soil i would surely find my answer.

…

a thirty dollar serum infused with Jeju Island green tea used to feel like the pinnacle of indulgence and physical luxury. it cooled and smoothed my bumpy inflamed skin that i’d relentlessly pick, punishing my grease-filled pores.

it was already hard enough to look at me.

the way my grandmother would wince when she looked at her cherub-cheeked baby that was suddenly changing. the dark blemishes marked her own aging, and signified all the impurity brewing within me too. it was the way her lips would snap back into a neutral line just as quickly as they contorted in repulsion when she remembered i was still her family. this was a catalyst for my obsession with bodilessness.

…

a feeling that seemed exclusive to cinema and animation could be achieved here, if i connect my headspace, to my heartspace. my heartspace to my core, and to my womb.

sitting on the sofa, my body liquified and melted into the gaps between brown leather cushions. the sofa was a space in my home that already defied materiality, my stepdad’s hard-earned credit score and consequent Rent-A-Center purchase, etched with a permanent marker by a child who should have been allowed to make more mistakes. the wrath directed at my little sister is a prime example why i am always seeking escape. to breach systems and cycles ingrained into DNA.

this knack for disappearing is generational.

i can choose to call the butt groove in my grandfather’s itchy blue armchair a “depression”. i can choose to be welcomed by its warmth, or disturbed by the energy, still lingering. i can choose to see meaning in every frayed thread, to feel the presence of its ghosts, or i can choose to see an armchair. Granddad chooses to let everything too complicated seep into the foam filling, dozing off to The Temptations.

if the body is an avatar, if life is played like a game, damage can be transmuted into power-ups. the trauma stored in my hips can be caught within my breath and released through my lips. pain will be indestructible still, but mutable.

by Amaya Branche

“Nameless Pain”

i don't know my body,

only my body.

the way to know my mind

is to write.

after writing,

i gaze at these words,

feel pains and joy (and more),

then,

confirm that i'm alive.

but my body is more complicated

than my mind.

it changes,

contrary to my will.

sometimes it is bloody,

sometimes it is painful,

sometimes it is just a lump of meat,

sometimes it is just ripples of skin,

sometimes it is like a demon

that dwells in the details,

sometimes it is like an ugly sculpture

that no one wants to make.

i want to prove that

i'm not a woman, just a human.

i need to prove that

i don't need any gender.

i crave to prove that

i'm just an invisible smoke

that has a shape of a human.

what is freedom?

who is me?

my pain is only my pain.

the theory to solve my pain

is nowhere.

someone's theory

might be a knife

to kill me.

my theory

might be a blanket

to cocoon someone.

i don't know my body,

only my body.

24 hours, 365 days,

i'm always with my body

that i don't know the most.

but i can't escape

from this broken glass,

i can't change to the hazy horizon,

because

i'm writing,

by using a part of

my (cracked, crumbled, lonely) body.

by Yuu Ikeda