bloody mind of primitivism

by Tempest Miller

I refuse to die, at home alone with drunk sleepy father.

I will take every treatment.

I will fill my lungs with air.

My body is stretched and replenished

as I walk through the wormhole

back to mystical nineteenth century Wales,

burning farmhouse,

mother in cloths and rags dropping baby down wishing well.

I refuse to die and I refuse to sit still.

I’m only fourteen

but I nurse a burning affection for the twenty-six-year-old man

who drives the milk truck,

and who one day I will invite in and trap with a skeleton key.

At the farmhouse, there is a secret door which goes to a basement,

where there are innocent victims chained to the walls.

Their eyes shoot through me.

If only I could reach through the square and grey pale of time and free them.

I refuse your questions, your answers.

I refuse your mother’s expressionless responses and desire.

Your beautiful friend with his bayonet,

who I was once shackled to and who I thought would be his own medicine for me

and who I could envision travelling with

to shag on English Civil War church stones,

he will soon yearn for me.

He will yearn for me until he is mad,

buckled,

a hopping frog. And he will forego his amphetamine

and his painting tools.

And when he does, I will refuse him also,

pregnant with feverish desire.

I will not die, but I will gladly be forgotten.

I will disappear into the icy, misty vulgarity of all of time.

*Originally published in chapbook England 2K State Insekt.

Photo of Tempest Miller

BIO: Tempest Miller (he/him) is a queer writer from the UK. He publishes a monthly chapbook on Amazon. His work has appeared in JAKE, Boats Against the Current and Swamp Pink. His instagram is @tempestm1ller.