PUNK POETRY: I Was a Child by Lydia Pearson

I Was A Child 

The day I got the shitty diagnosis,

three letters: IBS, I remember sitting, fidgeting, being told it was because I had anxiety, 

because of my longer, lingering 

diagnosis of Dyspraxia.

I hadn't realised anxiety could

permanently fuck your body up

something chronic-or that they 

would make my future periods 

bloody hard. 

So I had these diagnoses, and I had anxiety. 

(All that aside,

I was also getting bullied).

And I was a child. 

I was eleven. 

--Lydia Pearson