Content Warning: Sexual Abuse

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Wilting 

My mind is uneasy

stirred and shifting

Flickering lights

signal changing faces

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The earth beneath your feet rumbles

The birds are out of tune —

uprooted and unclear

a circulation of fear

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A fool to dream

or perhaps foolish desires?

Woven, stitched deep

into layers just out of reach

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This is the place

yes, this is the place

Watch it appear

then drip, drip away

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Rotting 

I ache for another day —

be it an unreachable day

One only in a dream

gone by the time you wake

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I ache for a deeper sleep —

be it tonight or the next

One that restores my mind

so, I can live

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I ache for a new body —

be it young or old

One that knows love

deep in its veins

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I ache for better hands —

be them nimble and lean

Ones that will paint

paint without fear

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I ache for another day —

one I know will come

A day I will be here

A day I will ache no more

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Rising

There is an inferno inside of me

I feel it burning

I am no longer afraid

to spit fire

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Places scorched

from wandering eyes, please

sorry — give us a smile

such natural feminine hues

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This trespassory

cannot be buried

it can only be burned

Let this blaze

ignite your body

and the ashes

be all that remains

of the unwelcome visitor

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Tired eyes, hear our cries

deafening and fierce

We are no longer afraid

to spit fire

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Blooming 

The vase of flowers

on the table are blooming

freshly picked and young

shades of the autumn sun

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Soft cries tease the sky

I’m silenced by their beauty

delicate and fluid

they dance intuitively

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You see, today

is only today

and tomorrow, I may not rise

but for now, let’s dream

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Like the wildflowers

which bloom in the fields

of your imagination

I am only temporary

The post Las flores silvestres que sueñan (The wildflowers who dream) appeared first on VERTIGO 2020.

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Content Warning: Self-harm, Discrimination, Sexual Assault

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You always said that white was good,

white was better than most.

It could be bleached and scrubbed,

never mind the blemish —

existing wholesome like it was before.

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But in your eyes,

my skin is tainted.

A moment’s touch, although expired,

has soiled my pores,

like oil to alabaster.

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Your hands are soap,

your words are water.

You hide me in bubbles,

you wring me dry,

Still, I am discoloured?

Spoiled.

Unfit to wear.

On your arm, the way you once did.

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But where is it? 

The bleach?

“Ah yes,” you sigh.

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Gentle at first, 

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then my chest itches,

my back smoulders.

Blisters engulf me like bubble wrap —

a straitjacket 

of my very own. 

Thank

   a     

          you.

The post Sylvia appeared first on VERTIGO 2020.

Content Warning: Discrimination

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Like a game of chess,

those white men would move first.

They wrote the game that way —

leaving others in the dirt.

Their dirt.

Or so they claimed

the day they cried Terra Nullius

and drowned out 60,000 years of life,

with Waltzing Matilda,

and a gun.

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All larrikins and beer.

“We’re multicultural here.”

We’ll take your nasi goreng, hommus,

and palak paneer.

A thin veneer.

Blue eyes scan

our dark hair and heed our foreign tongue,

as they pluck a fallen branch

from the rotten, red river gum

and draw a line in the sand —

separating that southern land

from mum, from dad, from me.

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Go back to where you came from

as though mum didn’t spend eighteen hours

in Westmead.

As though,

the only sand for me is

in the desert,

idling in my parents

moth-eaten and frayed

memory. 

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It’s this line

that pets

Kath instead of Oodgeroo,

Ayers Rock and Mrs. Macquaries chair.

Lest we forget Yassmin,

the activist engineer.

A lie by omission — Pinjarra, 

Cape Grim and Rufus River —

is still a lie,

in the syllabus

and on the

bleached 

walls in Canberra.

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I weigh their luke-warm fair-go

in my greasy dago palm,

and gaze at the water’s edge,

crusted with old seaweed.

White children play there

like flies on shit.

The post A line in the sand appeared first on VERTIGO 2020.

Artwork: Angelina Tran | @gna.trn

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Content Warning: Domestic Abuse, Blood, Injury, Death, Violence

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my mother’s hands, protruding veins embroidered on aged skin

like roadmaps leading to nowhere 

hands that have kneaded too much atta 

hands that have held too many broken things 

i watch them drown in the moonlight 

and i can’t help but say 

i want a life that is nothing like yours 

i don’t want sacrifice 

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and she recoils

retracts, 

she says this is my choice 

she runs on open, bloody wounds

toward a narrowing horizon 

toward a sunset perpetually out of reach and says to me 

“these are my choices don’t you ever look me in the eyes i gave you and have the courage 

to pity me”

she says choice but how can i see choice 

when i see her mother, her mother’s mother, 

all the women in my family, all the women i have ever known

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i see the wounds they held closed with calloused hands 

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i see the sewing of smiles into tired, weathered faces 

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i see endless unreasonable compromises 

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i see them standing in shallow graves

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i see them just being in the wrong place at the wrong time

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think of all the slit necks and all the blood spilt just so he could drink, just so he could see something red 

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i see acid tears burning their hands that they made the mistake of crying into  

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i see generations of frustration that she’ll only ever show through a single sigh 

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my cousin calls with a split lip and with a joker-like smile, says “what? nothing happened?” and then she drowns in denial 

and i’ll always ask why she stays and goes 

through exhausting mess

people i know have left 

for a lot less 

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she said don’t you worry 

i’ll drink the blood that they took 

till it pours from my eyes 

and maybe then you’ll realise that i don’t need help, i don’t need pity, 

i’m doing just fine 

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she’s free from him now — at least there’s that,

but she told me she can’t 

help but miss the knife in her back 

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i remember when a different cousin’s abuser died 

she said it doesn’t matter

and that her jaw still clicks 

and her mind plays tricks 

when she sees him at night 

and when someone’s touch makes her flinch

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i tell my mother i still pray 

for a life nothing like theirs 

and i know we’ll always disagree 

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but she says instead you should pray to be 

anything, anything like me.

The post for every woman i’ve ever known appeared first on VERTIGO 2020.

Content Warning: Mental Illness, Eating Disorder

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Breakfast: Coffee, with a side of antidepressants 

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I remember the first time I had coffee on an empty stomach, 

the sensation of anxiety,

the echo of energy resonated inside my desolated body until every limb found irritability.

The illusion of being alive. 

Alive and uninhabited,

accompanied by the pill that manipulates my mind to think I’m recovering. 

I skim through my catalog of clothing, 

ranging sizes 12 to 20, 

and wonder why my skin is still the piece that doesn’t fit right to my reflection 

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Lunch: Three celery sticks + hummus 

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Celery is 95% water,

a liquid disguised as a solid, 

a restriction masquerading as a meal.

The number three sounds like bliss to my calorie calculator.

Two steps forward and one step back,

but better still doesn’t mean good.

Hummus is the red paint dragging across the white canvas, 

giving bland a meaning. 

The salt in the seawater. 

what I thought was standing up too quickly, 

is just standing. 

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Dinner: 1 Slice of white bread + butter with a side of melatonin

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A fussy child’s dream.

It tastes like fairy bread without the pixie dust, 

the kind of meal that would make Tinker Bell weep tears of disappointment, 

as she wonders when the magic in me died. 

How do I tell her that I do it to fit into her dress?

When the melatonin silences me, 

I dream of the day I walk into the streets and be the success story

What they associate with ‘pride’,

people say the journey is better than the destination,

but is that point still intact?

When the point to reach is seeing my ribs cling wrapped to my skin, 

and my hand being able to fit around my wrists. 

When I’m a house with no tenants.

When I’m bones with no being.

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Snack: Water 

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The act of filling my stomach with the ocean. 

With every movement this vessel makes

the waves crash against the silence.

What is an ocean without anything in it? 

I say a sink — 

that’s how small I need to be. 

The post Meal Plan appeared first on VERTIGO 2020.

Content Warning: Body Horror

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CALLSIGN: CHITIN. LOCKED UP. PUNCHING OUT.

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LOOK. LOOK. TWO SETS OF EYES. WHO CAN SAY HOW YOU SEE. WHO CAN SAY HOW YOU LOOK. YOU LOOK SO SMALL.

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GRIP AND PULL AND STEER. GRIP FOR YOUR LIFE. PULL. RIP YOURSELF APART IF YOU NEED TO.

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BODIES. BODIES. BODY? YOU MADE YOURSELF FEEL LIKE THIS IS YOUR BODY. YOU MADE YOURSELF LOOK LIKE THEM.

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ALERT. ALERT. IMPACT DETECTED ON OPTICAL SYSTEMS. IMPACT DETECTED ON OPTICAL SYSTEMS. HEY SHITFACE, SOMEONE PUNCHED YOU IN THE HEAD.

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BAD DAY. BAD DAY. BAD DAY. WE DIDN’T EVEN THINK WE HAD BAD DAYS ANYMORE.

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WHERE IS MY FACE WHERE ARE MY ARMS. AH, THERE YOU ARE. GRIP AND PULL AND STEER.

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BUILD. BUILD YOURSELF. BRICKS OF BRAIN ARE NOT HARD TO FIND. ARE YOU EVEN LOOKING?

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FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU. FUCK ME. COMPLETE UNITY HAS NEVER FELT SO ENTICING.

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CLIMAX. CLIMAX. CLIMAX. JUMP. THERE IS NO NEED FOR SKIN ANYMORE.

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CHITIN IS DEFINED AS THE MAJOR CONSTITUENT EXOSKELETON OF ARTHROPODS AND THE CELL WALLS OF FUNGI.

The post EXO_SKELETON appeared first on VERTIGO 2020.

Artwork: Atsaya Gabiryalpillai | @_atsaya_

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Those jeans —

washed denim,

ripped below the knee,

tattered above the heel,

belted around the midriff.

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Trace loose threads,

follow the day’s wear and tear,

splotchy mornings

bleached coffee stains,

sultry evenings —

buttons undone.

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The frays

unfurling,

like the hushed secrets

she whispers in the dark.

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Study the whitewash

spinning,

like clouds

sewn on pale blue skylines —

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bring the heavens to her thighs.

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The places they’ve taken her —

to bus stops and corner shops,

on skateboards,

along meandering streets,

to leafier retreats.

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See them running in fields —

they climb jacaranda trees,

make angels in wheatgrass,

fade in the springtime sun.

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Reaped cotton

sews her to the soil below —

fleecy tendrils

planting her

in amber–flecked reveries.

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On walks home,

they carry dandelion lint.

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Inspect the stitching —

a pretty patchwork

of spring’s leftovers;

self-seamed sunflowers,

and honeysuckle hems.

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They smell of daylight savings,

of rain on dry earth.

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By morning,

they’re freckled by pistachio brittle

and parching orange juice.

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Watch them as they come alight,

tiptoeing on sunlight leaks

to other places —

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greener places.

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Soon she dissipates,

flesh like pollen in the breeze.

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But there remains those

springtime jeans.

The post Dandelion Lint appeared first on VERTIGO 2020.

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Note: Written during the May 2020 lockdown; transcript taken from “on motivation in isolation” VertigoTV Student Spotlight.

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The thing about navigating a waiting space like COVID isolation is that time is cracked by circumstance. And without a real sense of time, my motivation has gotten a bit lost. Everything feels like it’s on pause. 

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It’s also a little hard to know who I am at the moment because I have found that I rely a bit too much on the constant dialogue of other people’s eyes darting around in my brain. It keeps my mind in this constant dichotomy of crafting myself through comparison to others, and then giving myself shit for comparing myself to others, which then spurs self-improvement and psychoanalysis. This is not necessarily a healthy dichotomy, but it is one that has contributed to a key brick in my Identity House, or Identity Wall (however you’d like to imagine it). 

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So, when I’ve had to take down some of these bricks over the course of isolation, this dichotomy has left behind a handful of sad, little maggot friends that have been dragged out into the light. And I’ve been tasked with looking these maggot friends in the eyes and deciding which ones to re-home. Because, the thing about these maggot friends is that while they may be causing structural damage in the damp cracks of my Identity House, I’m sure they can serve as key, happy, thriving parts of an ecosystem somewhere else. I’ve just gotta wade through a mushy, mushy construction site to get there because I took a bit of a sledgehammer to Time half-way through April to try and craft the ‘in-between’ into a space of experimentation. 

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Anyway, here are some of the key things I’ve learned, I think:

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‘Special’ is our choices in the most mundane situations possible.

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The ‘aligning of stars’ is the craft of perspective, and discomfort feels uncomfortable. 

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Finally, ‘motivation’ is a negotiation. A negotiation between me, my maggot friends, and the slew of tradies who came into my brain to confiscate my sledgehammer and bring some sense of order to the shards of time I’ve left strewn around my thoughts. 

The post On Motivation in Isolation appeared first on VERTIGO 2020.

Artwork: Thy Mai | @mytea.design

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Mirrors tell two tales

What we see

And what we want

A reflection of sadness

A reflective front 

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I look into the mirror to understand me

To try and find

The small and large

To try and find what makes me, me

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But all I see

Is the need to be more

To be what others

Want me to desperately be

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To be bigger 

To be stronger

To be broader

And taller?

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To be satisfying

To be norm defying

all the while objectifying

More for them

And less for me

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But the more I look

The more vain I become

The more hateful I am

Of how much I’ve succumbed

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And little by little

I see the problems of the world

Not just outside

But in that mirror on the wall

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Brown may turn to black

And hair may grow down

A cut and a scrape

An allergy that makes me look a clown

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A curve and a striation

A scar that might bring sensation

Everything that can be seen

And all that is in between,

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Because a Greek god I am not.

But I am saddened to see

That this mirror has taken and trapped 

What, evidently, should be free

The post Dear Mirror appeared first on VERTIGO 2020.

Artwork: Rachel Kang | @rachelkaang

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This poem was originally published in UTS 2020 Writers’ Anthology: Empty Sky. Check it out here.

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what’s better than clean sheets?

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you whisper,

as creamy trains

follow us from the laundry.

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crisp, papery linen,

fresh-from-the-line,

wrapped neatly

over foamy corners.

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we flatten the crinkled mess —

smooth saturday’s sunbake

from linen pores.

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catch glimpses of you

between air-strewn sheets;

pearly teeth

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and milky skin —

you glitter

in wafer-thin billows.

we sink our faces

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into chubby cushions  —

flesh enmeshed;

a cotton complexion

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you roll around in it —

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kittenish, tumbling,

dryer-like,

on satin pillow slips

and faux fur throws

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you lie there for a moment;

a regal adornment

of pale plush —

goddess of lush

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dust dances now,

on blind-dashed glimmers,

a dazzling duet

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of airborne fibres

wafted by the soft crunch of

our goose feather quilt

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we live,

for a moment,

in that dust flecked lustre

of last year’s polaroids.

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tonight,

we’ll fold new creases,

you’ll whisper in your sleep:

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what’s better than clean sheets?

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I brush lint from your lips,

nothing.

The post Pillow Talk appeared first on VERTIGO 2020.