What is a flare up? A ‘flare up’ or ‘flare’ in chronic illness terms means a temporary worsening in severity of symptoms or condition that eventually subsides or lessens. Check out my Podcast Tea with HB for more info

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tysm for reading x

I didn’t ask my dad for tea
Though he brought it anyway
I didn’t ask my niece for food
But she fed me from my plate
Could the questions be our answer?
Could what we need be freely given?
Do we continue down this path?
Is ‘freedom’ the cage we all live in?

my kindness is never wasted,
it is fertilised by shit-talk

she gives as good as she gets, an arm and a leg.
but it’s never enough, is it?
she’s swimming upstream, painfully unseen
growing desperate for recognition, or anything

her light is flickering but it never goes out.
pond-green eyes only when she cries
so everyone mistakes them for brown
she feels there is a metaphor in that, somehow
on the tennis court, now, looking for fun
‘who’s girlfriend are you?’ sexism, it starts so young.

but you’re no deity, despite what you say
patients aren’t disciples, but I always stay
letting down my inner child
but I don’t have a choice
this system is wild
we’re not given a voice
could you try to care?
it’s in your title after all
you’re feral, that’s an order too tall

The scars are still open, I am unclean
promises I made that you won’t let me keep
frozen in place, my faith is a leap
see, for all that’s been taken, I choose to give
I am an optimist, I get to live

my mind is an archive, all kinds of betrayal
I pore through the pages, I fret and I fail
you choose to forget, and I can’t forgive
I am left livid, I have to live
wasting my nights, deciphering the wrong
I can’t leave the building ‘cause I was too young
I am a custodian of my rotten dreams

Babes I can breathe under the sea
You’d go crazy too if you were me

But they are still convinced I’m a fake
Cos they ain’t never seen a mermaid
‘Hey how could you do that yesterday’
‘You don’t look sick, you’re okay’
‘You say you’re half fish? No way!’
‘Try some yoga, just try harder, have you tried drinking water?’
‘Just think positively!!!’

I’m a mermaid getting sunkissed on the beach
And the breath I take is a sailor’s break
Not the gasping misconception I’m some leech
There’s a place I’ve seen
where being half of two things
is desirable like a sunset on a lake
And I’m in books and films and magazines