Natasha
About the author:
Natasha is a 25 year old interdisciplinary student with a background in care and support work. She admits that she can be a little bit intense, using writing as a form of expression for her passions and deep feelings about the world and its many injustices. She has also found it a therapeutic way of exploring her own history of trauma and its lasting effects, and importantly, to fight back against stigma and misrecognition
You can read a selection of her poems in the slideshow below:
I am
Sighs release,
and I wish I had the energy to smile,
but I am tired
tears fall,
and I wish I had a story to tell,
but I do not
Yes, I am tired
and no,
I have no justification
no sense to make
no hard truths for you to swallow
no ‘story’ to garner your sympathies
[reserved]
as they are,
for those who have the power
to make themselves
heard
if I did, you might permit me to feel
the way that I do
but I do not
and
[you] do not
So, there is just me
[and my feelings]
and what have feelings ever been good for anyway?
‘What does it feel like to make sense?’
I do not know
Sighs release,
and I wish I had the labels that you liked,
but I do not
Tears fall,
and I wish I had the solidity you required,
but I am me
Yes, I am I
and no,
I do not know what that means
…
No,
I do not know what that means.
The colours of the dress I’ll wear
Will be a little bit of everything
My camouflage for the rapidly changing waters
In which I’m surrounded, under which I am burying
And for this, still, you’ll call me out
As lacking, too, in authenticity
Yet when I struggle to claim boundaries
You’ll scold my temper and call it rigidity
I will not fit into your order,
So, disorder, you will claim
So, I’ll shape and shift myself
Just to survive, without a name
A thing I’ll often claim with pride
Will be my lack of box or boundary
But I’ll struggle to contain myself
And heart-stained sleeves are not so easy to wear proudly
In my defence, I’ll claimThat derogated frame, of vulnerability