Leopold Crow

Leopold Crow (he/they) is a trans writer who can generally be found painting, embroidering, or talking someone’s ear off about Star Wars. More of his work can be found at https://leopold-crow.carrd.co

Easy read of the poem in the images above:

girl hero’s self-portrait

(cw: body horror & wounds) 

open wounds dry out purple like paint on palettes forgotten overnight
and I reconsider how I define myself: all clockwork intestines traced in
white pen, all our world defined by cross-hatching and marks left
overnight by trailing elbows in wet paint. we all have our own jealousy,
and I'm a good enough literature student to know not to carry envy
of my own reflection, dripping daggers from my chest. 

with curiosity, comes the slow growth into a body too small for all this
bitterness, for all these driving licences and clenched teeth. zoom in
with the camera you're not meant to take to this not-gallery,
watch the crumbling, like I'm Pompeii and painting the sky collapsing
under the weight of my own skin. rivers run gold and bloody and all roads
may not lead to ruin when you notice the dandelions in the cracks. 

I have plans, you see, I'm going to paint gold along my eyelids and all down
my right arm, let the paint trickle until it's cracking dry under my nails.
the treasure I'll find will be worth so much more than any of this sadness
- all technicolour new beginnings fought for with tooth and nail at 12:06am,
here, when I'm half-convinced my eyesight is turning black and white.
but this isn't the hardest part, the anger. 

it's a well-known fact that my teeth grew in crooked, and even better
known that I make a really shitty girl. growing up is a battle against my brother,
and I remember that half year I where could do boy just as good
before he started growing a moustache. I grow twisted through the mesh fence.
I always wake up when my sister cries in the night and part of me worries
about resentful girl heroes and Bowie in a labyrinth too much for my own good. 

so yeah, playing the hero really shouldn't be the career option for me. sphinxes
without secrets and all. I don't have the sense of direction for labyrinths,
and what that kid in the library never suspected was that the hero was well bent.
truly fucking flaming, boygirl eyes practically burning holes through the pages.
it's a picture perfect puzzle with half the pieces flipped, contorted,
so controversially abstracted. I hope you'll end up horrified as I laugh. 

and I'll bet your inner voice haunts you for days, spitting up poetry in the form
of half-rotted fleshy villanelles, ox-eye daisies spilling up from your mouth
like they split through my ribs. I hope you don't like me. you don't get to.
I won't be your spilt milk. look at me, I'm awake. don't you dare cry. I'm a
Villasana portrait, bright thread stabbed through my eyelids, I'm making myself
my ever after. this is my monstrous heroine and she's leaving solid ground. 

she's a gaping open wound, practically cavernous, carnivorous, tracing
faces and feathers bubbling up under stretched thin skin. I reconsider
how I define myself, refine pointed painted teeth into something that is mine.
here, my forearms: violet graffiti, something unforgivable, unforgettable. (remember me.) 
here, my thighs: torn from brambles, faded suit of swords, taking back a future.
here, my cheeks: Pollock-flecked with neon and gold.  

the girl hero confides that the home she made is waiting.
this is my gateway: you have no power over me.