I love the way you look in the sunshine by Perry Gasteiger

CW: self-harm

Before I knew how tender

the colour blue could be,

I threw myself against asphalt,

put my head through walls

and stuck pins in my eyes.

Before I unlearned

how to clothe myself,

laid bare to the world,

I ripped skin on rusted nails,

pushed splinters into bleeding palms,

shattered ribs and screamed

hateful words into the night.

Before the unfolding of my self,

like the peeling back

of trembling fingers,

I knew nothing —

as tears kiss my face

at the openness of blue skies,

I wonder at the kindness

of undoing.

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Perry Gasteiger (they/them) is a queer, non-binary poet. Their work focuses on the mundane darkness of our everyday world using juxtaposition between the real and the abstract, the beautiful and the deformed, the congruent and the disordered. Perry aims to see the easily unnoticeable in an evocative and empathetic way. Twitter: @sunshineloft