Consistency

My Dad once dismissed a friend as a hypocrite,
which I took to be an induction to the truth.
Lately though, I think the things I love in you
I love because they’re grossly inconsistent.
Your signature smell is rose, your delicate petal
hands thumb through pages of gory true-crime
that I ask you not to share. Isn’t it strange
that pain is something you can see in a person.
How it functions as a cursor that hovers
over the face. Her whole body can open
under it, I lean towards her and click.

I struggled against the term Miss – which
always seemed to fly past me and hit a bystander.
I’m here because I need a place to wrestle
with words. Force their mouths open – wider
and wider so I can enter their darkness. And yes,
the pit of every word is the same – pitch black.
The body, when it’s not wrestling, is just dots.
Points of encounter marked on a sense map.
They constellate, but they don’t make shapes.
It’s the mind that draws lines between them,
imagines a big dipper or lovers in the sky.

I always wanted more. People that is, because love
is just another word whose mouth is wet and dark
and my fingers would like to know how warm it is.

Bianca Pina is a multi-disciplinary artist, poet, and designer based in London. Her work encompasses many mediums including language, ink, clay, pixels, photography and illustration. Bianca has completed an MA in Writing Poetry through Newcastle University & The Poetry School London. Her poetry often has an arresting, brittle quality that can be both jagged and tender and explores the complex fields of family and personal history. She has published a chapbook titled Artificial & Otherwise with Good Space Gallery (2023) for their Machine Dreams exhibition. Individual poems have been featured in Empty House Press, Green Ink Poetry, Sybil Journal, Acropolis Journal, Black Iris Poetry &The Pomegranate London.