As a child I am not permitted in the good room

            No small feet on the carpet

            No touching

            Ushered away from glass ornaments

            My favourite, a flawless glass maiden

            Shows me what is valuable, out of reach
At sixteen I think that if I can’t be hot I may as well die

            How to win enemies and piss people off

            How to get clear skin in 6800 easy steps

            How to lose ten kilos in five hours

            How to eat sh*t without getting a bad taste in your mouth

            How to live
At work I am

            How to fake it until you forget how you actually feel

            How to fall in public to elicit the least amount of laughter

            How to apply lipstick around the outside of your lips

            How to blink to signal for help

            Five easy tips for looking younger than— 
The radio tells me what I must like, it offers me prepaid funerals as a good idea

            I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottom of my trousers—

            I am no vampire, I have not drunk from the fountain

            I crumble, I crack at edges

            My skin breaks

            I stretch and frail

 

I have forgotten the shapes my body can make without a chair or a screen

            I am over-stimulated

            My attention drawn to the digital, the pixel, the moment of urgency

            How to dress for Zoom

            How to wear your hair so you don’t look like you’ve been awake all night

            How to convince your coworkers that you are listening in the online meeting
My body is changeable, I am no glass maiden

            Created in the furnace, poured into her forever form

            If she falls, she shatters, if she is thrown, she cannot fly

            You dust gatherer, you perfect fraud

            Locked in the good room

            Without affection, cold
And you?

            Are you happy, did you get what you wanted?

            Are you all that you wished for?

            Are you a shape that can be poured?

            Who catches you if you fall?