Scholars of the Global North sometimes shelter themselves in neo-colonial positions when confronted with revolutionary praxis.   

“Something in a fragile state always seems more beautiful because you realise that they might not be there tomorrow.”

Dear [REDACTED], 

I want to apologise for the scene that I made at The Rose last Friday.   

I am writing this letter at the recommendation of Dr Celine Bertuch (my Freudian psychoanalyst).  

For the past week, I’ve had a recurring dream where I find you alone in the Quad General Lecture Theatre (K2.05). Only, when I sit beside you, the scenery changes – the wooden pews turn into the firm, purple leather seats of a V Set Intercity Train. You turn to speak, but when you do, your voice is Dr Bertuch’s (she finds this detail quite fascinating).

“after a week helen declared that the lessons would conclude, and she drove off to meet her friends in an abandoned parking lot. womanhood”

“So I’m there, walking around with L0V3 D0ll and she’s wearing these awfully tight shoes and she tells me it’s so she can always remember her bondage or whatever. Some sexbot thing, I thought. They must know she wants to be a model.”

“I want to look as beautiful as my casket.

I want to live forever and be afraid of everything.

Life is so good and it’s only going to get worse.

And in dreams, I don’t have to tuck my wings inside my dress. 

There are angels sitting next to you in the train,

Yet to earn their halo, yet to enter heaven.”

“The play symbol bulges stupidly before the sub-saharan beauty of your jungle. Is heaven nothing but a blank slate? THE END. Play again? What’s wrong? Why are you crying? Here is a gift, do not dwell. Here, a new environment. Let me lead you to a new life. You can always begin again.”

“I wipe it with my other hand to take a deeper look, but it leaves a smear of sheer colour. It looks almost brown. I can feel my eyebrows knit in confusion. I pull my hand to my nose to smell the strange mystery liquid. It smells sweet with a touch of copper.”

“This intensity that morphed into a sense of overwhelm so consuming I felt that nothing could be funnelled into a singular actuality. I let that feeling — whatever it was, consume me.”

“I think of her sometimes, on nights like this, when my shirt is low and the wind kisses my chest as greedy eyes stare. They don’t know there is nothing there anymore. I ate her years ago, splitting the tough skin with my front teeth to reach the fruit inside. But tonight, here, with the moon hiding behind low, yellow clouds, Beautiful Girl walks with me.”

“When he slept, I chiseled out a keyhole 

in his back to peek inside the crushed 

velvet cavity, the bone cage of a person 

who did not: a traveling ball of saliva,

surging breaths, simmering bile.”

I’m Eminem’s real daughter. I’m gonna join a cult if I can find one. I’m googling ‘how to survive sexuality’ like Lohanthony. I’m doing subliminals to you