A Body, in Parts

Amala

Amala is a lawyer and researcher exploring the everyday lives of the law, the relationships between law and society, and the political economies of legal systems. They have lived with multiple chronic illnesses all their life, and reading and writing have always been a home to try to express some of the multitude of this life.

A body, in parts

There is a body

And there also isn’t

There is a body, and there also isn’t

Because although I feel it every day in my body and chest and stomach and behind my eyes with the tears almost coming 

Everything feels like a reminder 

“This is just in your head”

Yet I know it’s not 

I want to write of liberation and futures of love, glory, beauty, desire

All I want is for you to say, it matters more to us that you are well than that you are present

But how can I write these futures when the future of survival, breath, existence doesn’t exist?

The state wants us to be happy with “acceptance,” “non-discrimination” and “rights,” at best, and expects us to be okay with “alive” and “not institutionalised” or “not incarcerated,” but I want to dream of my technicolour best, better than my technicolour best, of words that don’t exist and languages beyond belief,

But I am stuck with

The Law

Workplaces

Illness

My brain

The world doesn’t cease to remind me, every morning, every afternoon, most evenings and some nights, that this is who I am, who I really really am