chronic

By Chay Newman

two ends of the same tightrope

telephone-wire iv line

folié a duex or

something like that

kiss me against my sanity

i will tell you i love you

and that my teeth ache

it’s not blood

it’s just all my organs

we are sleeping with sepsis

pick my teeth from the floor

as i tell you i don’t know

how they got there

please delude yourself

believe all the things

you do not want to

when it comes to loving me

i will let you

i’m selfish

we are the liminal space

inbetween the wounds

i do not want you to fix this

and you will not like

the taste of medicine

untie the line

let me bleed novocaine

i will hold you anyway

Chay Newman (23) is a writer, editor, and aspiring indie publisher whose work has appeared in a handful of anthologies and literary journals. Their work centres on neurodivergence and defying misconceptions about disability through speculative and fantastical fiction. Chay is the creator of Cyanica—a zine dedicated to publishing work by neurodivergent, disabled, and chronically ill artists, to foster diversity within the arts sector. When not in the trenches of their own existentialism, they can be found making up words like ‘illucid’, ‘gospelic’, and ‘transienity’, while overusing commas because it feels more “poetic”. Find Chay online at cyani.ca.