28.

It's been two weeks since I last blogged, but there's not an awful lot to catch you up with on the writing front. I've been suffering from severe burn-out, and dealing with some Emotions. Most notably, I recently saw a family member I've not seen since I came out as trans. He is severely ill, and I honestly believed I might never see him again. I'm not ready to talk about quite what it meant to me, but there's a lot to unpack there.

Anyway, I have written very little but I have been thinking an awful lot, about old ideas and new. Recently I've become interested in the politics and goings-on of magpies. There's certainly a story in there somewhere, and I'm going to dig it out.

In other news, I turned twenty-eight! Every new age I turn feels momentous to me; there have been many times in my life where I've been convinced I would die extremely young, so to come crashing into my late twenties is a surprise. But not an unwelcome one.

I wrote a poem about turning twenty-eight, here it is:


27, I have not learnt to draw 
like Van Gogh, not developed a taste for 
vermilion and chartreuse and peacock blue
sharp-scented, fanned out on the tip of my tongue. 
I have found no rapture in colour and line
and my pencil wobbles like a child’s.
But still, in two days, I turn 28.

27; I reached out a hand for the comfort,
the bone-cold comfort, of death reaching back.
The first instinct, they say, is to live.
Lungs swelling like bellows, one two, one two.
I was born without breath; blue-faced, beaten.
And sometimes I think I was right all along. 
But still, in two days, I turn 28.

27, the age of tragic, too-young 
the year I tried to rip clean from myself 
and to-be-or-not-to be nothing at all.
27. The skin of my teeth pulled raw.
And in crawling back out of the drain,
I started something I couldn’t finish. 
And in two days, I turn 28.