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Pinhole Poetry @pinholepoetry.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Today, Alessandro Merendino shares his poem ‘growth hormone by puncture’ and tells us a bit about his writing process and routine. www.facebook.com/share/19Hy1R...

the needle asked my blood how much of me was still refusing.
childhood was a height chart, a waiting room, cotton wool pressed where I had opened.

growth hormone by puncture
my legs, my arms, my belly,
a blue grammar
no one taught me to read.
for ten years
growth entered through a pen under the kitchen light.
the liquid clicked in with its fluorescent instruction:
grow.
but my body translated grow as burn.
every three months the green cup returned. i drank glucose syrup, sweet as a lie,
thick as punishment.
then the needle asked my blood how much of me was still refusing.
childhood was a height chart, a waiting room, cotton wool pressed where I had opened.
I was not a boy.
I was bark, root, white leaf,
a tree taught upward from fallow soil.
they called it treatment. years later,
I am not the tree they meant.