I wanna live now & Reflections

Poetry by Quinlin Caid


UntitledWith Mind and Skill by Edgar Baculi (2024)


I wanna live now

I carried concrete pieces in my pocket

through lonely wet sand while waving for help.

This rough, man-made rock cracked off when they couldn’t

glue me to the ground.

Can’t stay welded to their cobblestone

nor fly away with these weighted bones;

when oceans rose, my body knelt to feed the shoreline.

 

I couldn’t see the sky from under, so

you subbed in for the stars.

You saw my anchor of recomposed concrete pieces and started

dropping nails as I mirrored your dance on the surface.

I became my anchor’s acupuncturist,

driving thick pins into nervous memories.

Every trauma accounted for, I hunted for mallets to end

my fifth year of underwater breathing.

 

The concrete would crack at the strike of a hammer.

I had the anger, but my hands were empty.

Beside the anchor I sat to wrap my arms around the sobbing composite,

squeezing the nails to crumple the structure into freedom.

The stars pull me out of the sea, bathing me in moonlight, singing

grow into the man you’ve been dying to know

until both my concrete and my bones scream

I wanna live now.


Reflections

I remember

the image encased within a glitter-glue-covered frame.

At this age, duct tape fixed everything;

the back of this mirror,

the lack of a wallet for my five-dollar bills,

even the distressing issue under my bejeweled butterfly shirt.

The tape pressed the fleshy tissue into my ribs so the rhinestones laid flatter. Fixed it.

 

The second frame I hated was the front door.

It taunted me as I walked towards the short yellow school bus,

laughter echoing through the burgundy wood and stored in the hollow handle.

If I twisted too hard while reluctantly leaving,

the laughter would ripple through me and shake up the spelt waffle in my stomach.

The ripple writhed through my contorting heart,

then pushed me off the welcome mat

as I refused confusion.

 

I remember the confusion.

Hair short on the right, left side long.

Rainbow print pants. Homemade doll dresses adorning the floor.

I liked it just fine here, but the future I pictured was someone else’s.

I convinced myself the gray blob in my thoughts was me,

with the white dress or wobbling toddlers or wonderful man worth loving,

begging these forced fantasies to become my wishes.

 

Upon reflection, the white dress wasn’t mine.

The fantasies retired when they achieved the only element tolerable at the time:

the wonderful man stands next to me now,

to my right, where there is a mirror.


Quinlin Caid (he/they) is a Canadian poet, musician, and author who typically uses writing to discuss themes related to gender identity, neurodivergence, and disability. His work can be found in B222, The Familiars, The Publisher’s Desk, and on any music streaming platform under the stage name Q. Caid. When not writing (a rare occurrence), he can be found in a pool pretending to be a shark.

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