the sky’s the colour of canned salmon
when i see that you’ve posted a poem
for the first time since our last text exchange
which ended like a cigarette being put out
an easy-to-smoke menthol cigarette
its papery exoskeleton twitching noiselessly
your stanzas are like carefully painted blood draining straight out of a frida kahlo self-portrait
your speech bubbles look to me like wooden alphabet blocks that spell out
something along the lines of “i swear i’m all grown up”
the sky is past its expiration date
swirling bruise-purple accumulations
choke the construction-crane-ridden horizon
the highway roaring with jealousy
stuck in its unilateral dimension
a small tendril of greenery reaches out to a pool of motor oil because it looks like a rainbow.
then it recoils, reminded once again.
Li Conde (they/them), a nonbinary amateur artist and writer, submitted three short poems: Coming of age in manic depression, Trying to moult when young, and It’s maybe 30% trauma. These works offer a glimpse of their life after having been diagnosed with type one manic depression (bipolar disorder) in September of 2021, at eighteen, after suffering a psychotic episode and being hospitalized for it. What followed was the pressures resulting from being sub-textually told they were insane by the medical establishment. Their attitude to writing and art is a therapeutic one. They ask: how can we increase our aliveness in a system that tells us we can never heal? How can young, queer, mentally ill people be finally allowed to be treated more like adults when no one trusts them? How do we “fix” lifelong diagnoses and gender dysphoria that are not supposed to be fixable?
Conde’s poetry is meant to be meticulously paced and easy to absorb. They strive to create art moments that are meaningful to everyone, and are fostering an impulse of imbibing their life with as much art and literature as possible.
