The things you hear when you listen to your body

by Troy Cabida

You are worth every violence.

There is virtue in refusing your grace

if it means surviving

in a world full of small things

that eat at your dignity

like small fishes with teeth

chasing your heel, like jobless men

good at getting what they want

using only your energy.

If it means keeping

on a little bit longer, take

for yourself what sustains you.

A leather wallet, a shattered car window,

Christmas 2022. Don’t forget to be smug.

Break their hearts the way they broke yours

and forgot about it, an active choice

they make to pretend God

is capable of such mundanity.

Remind them that God exists

and that He saw everything.

Troy Cabida performed this poem at our screening event of Lingua Franca at Prince Charles Cinema. His poem is a response to the sense of otherness found in the most intimate of relations, as explored in Lingua Franca.

Troy Cabida (he/him) is a Filipino poet from south-west London. His recent poems appear in fourteen poems, TLDTD Journal, bath magg, and 100 Queer Poems by Vintage. His debut pamphlet, War Dove, was published by Bad Betty Press in May 2020. He has served as producer for the London open mic night Poetry and Shaah, and currently works as a Library Assistant for the National Poetry Library, Southbank Centre.