Ash Bainbridge
Off-grid wealth in state-dealt poverty:
I am a Relationship Anarchist.
Familial economy,
hormone-soaked audacity, and
insecurities
are restructured for
growth.
Love is not commodity.
Why spend my hard earns
on one impulse buy –
The Best I Can Afford –
then trust my billboard
also markets, “I’m alright!”
No returns.
Free will.
Until –
one day –
one of us dies and The
One robbed grieving with
demonetised feelings
and bankrupt heart
restarts gambling
on just
one more
yet another The
One.
I value choice. But, fuck me, the voice of
nags when deadlines hang
and they all clock me active on Instagram.
Investment? STI tests regularly,
loneliness when no-one’s free,
slutty picnics, Air BnBs,
the oversight
one
day all may crash
me
simultaneously.
Our joint diary’s a trading
floor masterpiece.
With honoured lust,
I know just
how much
my metamour’s vegan lube costs.
These queered bonds are not nylon-clad fuck factory,
battery human hatchery,
triad trigonometry with
sexperts (free)
and sexpertise (free),
or tat tonic for toxic jealousy.
I am home
and homesick
concurrently.
Ash Bainbridge (they/he) is a trans polyamorous parent and student midwife based in Worcester, UK. Their work celebrates these marginalized identities via language as safety, progress, and glue. In 2022, Ash was awarded a full mentorship with The Word Association and shortlisted for the Mary Seacole Award for Outstanding Contribution to Diversity and Inclusion. Their poems have been published by - amongst others - Pulp Poets Press, Solstice Literary Magazine, The Mum Poem Press, Spoonie Press, and Bleeding Thunder.
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