☀ Today's Poem: "Judas" Gabrielle Bates

could I be punished for thinking there are many ways of being dutiful
me staring at the shape of a man I love his body covered in light
like a patchy white mold        wanting to scrape it off before I eat
could I           eyed as I am brained as I am be blamed

at the age of eight I was locked in a dryer it was not turned on it was
a space made not for me but what I wore a place of heat and turning
turned around me cold and still           to be curled into one self so long
the scent between the thighs is the same as the mouth        is the same

as the scent surrounding is to go about the world forever skeptical
of endings          birth sex fear love loyalty nothing ends truthfully
my knees were at my neck so long I spawned a companion            sister
chromatids speared with the same spindle we consoled one another

crying and banging the walls was too easy of course it didn't work
God rarely rewards the hysterical it's the quiet sufferers God likes
to keep alive        there was no light in that ridged steel round no light
and thus loose minds we made peace with this as the place of our death

I began to believe        I was not a victim I        had locked myself in there
like a baby's skull is sometimes strapped into a helmet my shape
was not yet pleasing enough did not yet match the future wanted for me
my true shape was a sphere it must be        I am to be sideless

later who knows how much later the chair was slid away from the door
and the door opened           light like a decomposing thing bit and bit
at all my knowledge my mother was hysterical and could not hold me
as the dryer had shh I told her shh there are many ways of being punished
        for it