With two weeks to go there is still time to contribute to celebrating and creating our own LGBTQI+ History in FebulousFebruary 2024.
Please email: fionarose@gmail with your piece of creative writing on the theme ‘To your childhood self’ (max 500 words).
all the best for now,
FioxiRose X
To my childhood self
They had you pegged as being a bit ‘Tim, nice but dim’
but look what you had to work with;,
A 1950’s curriculum and mediocre teaching.
You still haven’t got to grips with the British line of succession,(probably due to trauma)
and you don’t give a toss about the national product of Brazil.
My poor girl. You were such a timid little thing,
Fearful of the girls at school, with their cruel mouths.
Fearful at home, with harsh blows.
But don’t worry my darling.
Turns out you are really quite clever,
And so very brave,
to arrive at being me.
Meg Williams
LLanbrynmair
17-7-70
As a man of seventy,
I think of the boy of 17.
I think too of the boy age 7.
So long ago, yet so recent.
Memories still surface, of events before adolescence.
Fears, fun, freaking out at stupid things, if only I had been stronger…
Bodies metamorphose in ten years,
The joys for boys age seven, are toys and tricks and treats.
For the boychild, the merest ‘ten years older,’ things have changed so much.
Teddies and lollies, toy cars and kids stuff, condemned to the cupboard.
Bodies grow stronger, desires all grow bolder.
Boys seek out girls girls seek out boys.
Unless you’re not normal.
“Normal?” What could ‘normal’ mean.
A penury of loneliness, Darkness descends every waking hour, shoving you into a cupboard, a soulless existence, experienced by Teddies worldwide.
His cupboard is a tomb,
a closet, by name undecided,
an island,
a well,
a desert.
A hellhole for loneliness and pain, wanton self destruction just lurks there,
gorging on loneliness and desire.
Till come the moment boychild can grow some more.
Girlchild can feel this too, equally lost, equally lonely, crying, and all alone.
Perceptions, realisations, the comfort of a friend, parents support, ‘if you’re lucky!’
But if you’re not? Seventeen creeps to twenty one, Twenty three the next primary number, the next primary year in ageing.
Aged then ticking to 70, looking back becomes a regular occupation.
Remember this? Remember that? Remember what? What happened to him?
Remember that first love of growing, kissing a boy, kissing a girl.
Maybe a dare, maybe a care. Let yourself go, unbuckle the chest you locked yourself in. Open the closet, cuddle old Teddy in your mind.
And in that moment of freedom, take a step, a tentative step, and maybe like this old man of seventy, if your lucky, that’s true, life won’t seem quite so bad.
Everything started with a small step, everything demands something of you.
But remember then your first loves, toys and cars and bears
Remember how you grew to love them, likewise you made your own luck, You gave yourselves some talking to,
But mostly, you gave yourself, a ‘Hug.’
Peter Cronin-Hill ( composed 1st February 2024)
Whitstable.
To my childhood self:
Girl, sit down.
Breathe. You are so loved.
Learn to love yourself too
Because self love will keep you going.
Their fighting doesn’t define you.
Don’t let it affect you.
Keep your head above water the best you can.
Breathe.
Those you judge you.
Their judgement doesn’t mean you’re it.
Don’t listen to them,
Breathe.
He who torments you, he’s not it.
This isn’t love. It’s toxicity.
Don’t listen to him.
Just breathe.
Future you will be proud and strong.
Educated and independent.
The echoes of the past will haunt you,
But try not to let the shit stick.
Girl, sit down and breathe.
Lauren Lynch
Christchurch, Aotearoa
Pound Lane
Sleepless in bed I take an imaginary tour around my childhood garden, pass the lorry-sized tyre-swing, peek in at a wren’s nest full of eggs. My dad crouches down to the ground listening to radio 4 while he grubs out apple trees every sunny Saturday morning I sit and watch still worried now about killing food trees.
I wander on til I arrive at the dense laurel hedge that dominates the edge. There are glasses clinking, people laughing and the sounds of a party going on in the garden beside ours. I’m confused because Mr and Mrs Button live next door, my pretend grandparents, whose house smells of fresh yeasty bread and something strange and fusty.
I gaze at the evergreen, hurt by the noise, still too only-child to bear missing out, even now. Everywhere is the ‘lily of the valley’ smell I crave, but those party noises. Gone are the knot puzzles Mr Button would quietly help me solve, with patient stretch and soft pull however much I strained to tighten the string and the glass of barley sugar water Mrs Button handed me that I never did drink.
What stays is the sound of new owners celebrating and the painful price of change.
Maj Ikle
Wales
Yes, her hair was cut so short her sister would put a scarf over it for her to cover it up.
Yes, her doctor called her ‘fat’.
Yes, she didn’t really have much of a voice back then.
Yes, she lacked confidence.
Yes, on the way to school she was tormented and bullied because of her uniform.
I told that girl many times since she will never be pushed about.
I told her grow your hair, ‘that’s right’ long and curly.
I told her you will lose the puppy fat and she married in a size 12 dress.
I told her she may have comfort ate then, but all would be okay.
It’s not easy when your dad dies when you are only 8 years old.
I told her it would be okay.
One day she would look back and see the horror by the haters and sigh.
I told you to work hard to help and support others as they faced similar demons in their youth. I told you so and you did.
Anne Lamb, Thanet
If only you could hear me now…
You recognise me but don’t know why or from where.
I know you, better than you know yourself. But your ego will find it difficult to believe that. Calm your ego!
When I tell you I was you, that I felt the things you feel, that I have seen the things you see and have seen, the mist thins, but doesn’t clear.
It is because I am you, not as you are, but as you will be. Or to be precise, yet simultaneously vague, as we may be if you make the same choices I have made. I don’t write to tell us not to make those same choices but to give us information I wish I had at the time. And to tell us that we’ll be ok, whichever choices we make!
I should start, as we have become prone to pontification when passing on knowledge!
Love is as important as we think it is, but not a finite resource! Our capacity to love is boundless. The key is love without limit or expectation. We are genuinely loved in return, by those who give it freely, without expectation of their own.
Do not abuse the gift of love freely given. Ever.
Be honest, even if it hurts. Lies only hurt more! And lying to ourself is just foolish!
Always have plan ‘B’, because plan ‘A’ will inevitably go wrong. It helps to have plans ‘C’ to ‘Z’ as well, but we rarely find time to make those!
Before we can love others, learn to love ourself. We are good enough! We are stronger than we think. We are not alone!
Be kind to ourself! There are enough bullies in life, don’t be our own bully too!
When our faith in humanity wanes, look for the good instead of berating the bad. It is always there. It just takes longer to see sometimes.
Hate only damages us, not anyone else!
Our parents have always loved us and always will, but they are not always right, we don’t always need their approval. We can make decisions on our own! They might well be the wrong ones, but we learn quickly! Trust me on this!!
Spend more time with family!!! They will be gone sooner than we think, and we will miss them more than we can imagine!
Read as much as we can! Read Shakespeare, Keats, Kerouac, Dickens, Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Orwell, Hosseini, Capote, Marquez, Twain, Austen, Woolf and as many more as you can. Explore literature from across the world, to broaden our mind. Travel as much as we can, learn more languages, and immerse ourself in other cultures as much as we can.
Read religious texts so that we understand them, the Quran, Hadith and Tafsir, the Bible New and Old Testaments (And read more than just the King James Bible), the Tanakh and the Talmud, the Vedas, Upanishads and Puranas, the Tripitaka and the Sutras, the Agams, the Guru Granth Sahib, the Tao Te Ching, Zhuangzi and the Daozang. We can’t argue with religion unless we know what they believe.
Understand, who we love, who we kiss, who we fuck, should NEVER be something we are ashamed of. Be true to how we feel! Read Kinsey but keep an open mind. Study queer theory, also keep an open mind. In fact, just keep an open mind.
Don’t hide our feelings about our gender. We were born in the wrong one. Trust me, when I say that trying to live with it in our head doesn’t work! We cannot control it, ever! Learn about it, teach people about it. Do this much sooner! People close to us aren’t cruel but can be naive. Help them to understand. Hiding it from them costs us far too much in the end!
And finally, there will likely be a guy called James… don’t fall for his crap… he’s a liar, and he’ll use us… basically he’s a massive douche! Avoid him, for the sake of our emotions and our bank balance!!
Kelly Tonks, 50, Canterbury.
Multicoloured buggies
Brightly coloured chalks,
An endless trail of sweet talkers
Encouraging me to walk.
Standing was easy, walking is hard
What’s harder is not knowing if I can get that far.
Crisp, white and beige walls,
I’m waiting to see if I can finger-paint them.
Mum’s eye is on me so probably not.
Don’t send me to preschool I’m all you’ve got!
I don’t have many friends, making them is hard.
What’s harder is not knowing if I can get that far.
I earned my handwriting pen today
All joined up letters
Challenging my best friend
to see if she can join them better.
The teacher keeps telling me off, telling me getting to secondary is hard
What’s harder is not knowing if I can get that far.
I lost all of my friends
revision is causing so much strain
I argued through another year
Most of my friends came back again
Exams are approaching
bringing a growing cloud of pain.
Dragging through year eleven, heavy on my brain.
I don’t much like it here, and getting to this point was hard.
But I do wish I could go back and promise me I would get this far.
Erin Lobb
Horsham
THE HAPPIEST DAYS OF YOUR LIFE?
Yesterday,
Reluctantly participating
In post committal chatter
(out of sight, out of mind)
I was assailed:
“You don’t remember me do you?”
bubbled a jowl-faced woman,
who held a ghost of familiarity
upon her provincial and so workaday face.
The assault continued:
“Remember Bidgood?” (Bomber)” “Bloxham” (Beak)
How could I forget?
Fascists to a man they were, we realise now….
And so we reminisced
upon their put-downs, breakdowns, mood swings
The torrents of such physical and verbal blows
That now, in legal terms, would constitute assault.
And then…
“That poem… ooh you read so well”
“was it …..Yours?”
And there, I suspect, her sentiment and surprise were really quite authentic;
“I never knew old Kingham (English)
Taught us so well” she bubbled on.
“He didn’t! “I smiled
Yet stepping back
I saw within that quip
There lay a world-sized grain of truth.
That red brick building, constituting school,
Whose architectural ugliness
Gave me…
:Misery, fear, and the daily milk of mocking humiliation;
: Also gifted, a Golding-like contempt
for the brutality in adolescence that constitutes my sex.
The all (that ALL that is now me)
The sensibility and the sense of one,
THAT
came much later,
Through taking a different path in life.
And them? Those fellow mourners?
I stared back at this crowd of careless school mates?
Whom I knew not then and never will know now,
And saw the linear lines that stretched back to their youth,
-A continuity that I myself quite lack.
And so, whilst passing through the gravestones,
Treading my way back to an eager yet reluctant state of one,
I glanced right back,
Back down the hollow tunnel of my past
And saw a person that was barely me.
I seemed more like a story that I’d read
In time gone by, concerning someone else.
- A tiny terror of a child
That hardly mirrors me at all
However, all in all, I was quite reassured that,
In those forming years of life
For all the misery that ensued,
They were, without a shadow of a doubt
THE UNHAPPIEST DAYS OF MY LIFE.
I.M. July 05 (rev 22)
Wales
FebulousFebruary 2025: Lost and Found 