a dented tin.
tomato soup, rust-licked & trembling between them
like a lung that once believed in breath.
fifty pence ambrosia.
chewless.
toothless.
because dentistry now orbits the moon
& every molar is a memory of privilege.
the flat creaks.
Graingetwn or Govan or Gravesend — redacted.
place is a fiction now.
Faction 9 bluewashed the maps.
Gethin folds into the radiator’s song,
paint-chipped warmth humming like a dying drone.
his bones don’t bend anymore; they negotiate.
each movement: an elegy for comfort.
mug to lip.
lemon husk steeped in stale heat.
“infused austerity,” he murmurs,
a toast to decline.
across the scarred woodlands of their table
(MDF, coffee-ringed, memory-etched)
Mags types like war.
her shoulders fortressed in tension.
screenlight refracts across tear-creased printouts:
How To Survive Being Deemed Unworthy By The State
Zine #37.
pages smell of tannins and thunder.
they laugh through their teethless rage
because satire sharpens the blade.
because if the system won’t shatter,
they’ll leave claw marks in its polish.
—
they are cartographers of collapse.
she reads the weather in the twitch of his eyelid.
he senses fog coiling behind her brow.
diagnoses are for ghosts.
they deal only in signals & pulses now.
the calendar died.
its hooks cradle only dust.
time is a rumour whispered by appointment cancellations.
today’s text from the ward:
“neurology cancelled. machine error.
you are not deteriorating fast enough.”
(like it’s a contest. like slow death isn’t worthy of concern.)
Mags doesn’t blink.
just turns the screen to Gethin’s scarred gaze.
“People’s Dignity Authority announce VRI* cuts to encourage employment.”
encourage.
like a whip encourages the horse.
like starvation encourages obedience.
twelve grand — gone.
that’s ink for zines.
power for the battered voice recorder.
a breath inhaled not in panic but in possibility.
her fingers find his.
no words.
just the heat of solidarity.
—
they’ve boiled the fat from life.
no booze. no car. no escape.
cupboards clink with jars of penance.
budget = battlefield.
they fund every act of creation with what the state withholds.
zines slid into hollowed-out phone boxes.
poems hissed into old dictaphones.
stickers slapped onto cold pylons:
SILENCE IS MY ALLY. I RETURN TO THE CIRCUIT.
this is not branding.
this is survival graffiti.
—
he once synthesised purity.
she once wrote columns sharp enough to bleed.
then came the weight.
then the fog.
then the stairs that mocked them.
then the doctors who smirked.
then the charities who called them “unfit”
as if suffering requires costume.
the state said: perform your pain.
and smile.
they refused.
—
tonight: another blackout ritual.
before sleep, one act of creation.
a haiku on the back of an obsolete DWP envelope:
the state says: walk.
so I crawl on damaged nerves.
you carry me home.they sleep like trench soldiers —
entwined, wary, unfinished.
this is not romance.
this is interdependence as insurgency.
and when the dark settles:
they whisper it again,
a punchline they will not let die:
they are fucking valuable.
—
valuable to each other.
to the echo chamber of the forgotten.
to the disabled poets clawing back breath
in a world that says, “just try harder.”
they carry the memory of a failed system
& the blueprint of what could still live.
they refuse gratitude for starvation.
refuse invisibility.
refuse polite submission.
the state’s spreadsheet does not contain them.
they are not line items.
they are authors of a circuitry that will outlive the machine.
they will write it again tomorrow.
as always.
together.
* Vital Resource Index
![Null Entry: [DOCTOR █████████] No Longer Responding](https://thehollowcircuit.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/cropped-THC-Logo-Empty-White-QR.png){kind=logo}