Molly Crighton
I Cope With Things Very Well
(Which is a Lie)
because I am a hysterical Victorian woman
clawing at my own face in a fainting chaise longue
and smacking my plate of oxtail toast off the table.
I am a rabid hyena that bites my own tail and tears
leaving a gore-crater in my flesh
which weeps blood and other substances.
Oh I am terrified of the day
you find out what I am—
when you follow the smears of blood
all the way down the corridor, Victorian drapery
catching fire from the temperature of it all
the walls epileptic with heat waves.
I am down the end of this corridor
sweating profusely in my own self-created furnace
like a madwoman in an attic.
Every metaphor I try and use to explain myself
just ends up back at a woman who’s insane
or an animal, whatever the difference is.
I’m sorry. You don’t deserve this, but I do.
Shapes are moving in my red wallpaper
shapes that are shaped like me.
Molly Crighton is a Dunedin writer. Her work has appeared in Landfall, a fine line, Starling, Tarot, Takahē, and The Cormorant. She placed third in the 2021 Page and Blackmore story competition, was a resident for the 2021 New Zealand Young Writers’ Festival, and was a featured poet for 2019’s National Poetry Day.