By Esme Bell
Today at home I cut my nails
to the beat of Rickie Lee Jones
whilst my dad waged sense on Twitter
and my mum did a pagan ceremony
at the kitchen table, making a wreath
with wood and tissues of paper.
My sister tried on my clothes upstairs,
excited to be taller than I was then,
and peace lolled legless into me
like two hounds with silky ears –
feeling time brittled away, past, sullied.
In the valley it had rained but the sun
Came out, red-ringed, before dinner.
By Muna Mir
In the early morning
a sparrow was delivered to my doorstep.
Splayed on the stone tiles, it sits
feathered and still, cold
in the morning light.
I did not wish to look at it.
You know how I am
never wanting to look death in the eye,
only the underbelly
which I thought I could penetrate
before it penetrated me. Still it stuck.
Small god of thresholds,
staring straight,
surely a premonition
for something else,
something worse, I thought,
then grew quickly regretful.
Sorry for my neglect: willful negligence
of soft and easy death
laid bare at my feet, and which I wished
to leave my sight. Assuming providence,
I’d discarded the dead
for some portent of which it was not.
I urged it to withdraw
for fear of what it could do
even after it had done all it would.
It lay cold and quiet on my doorstep.
By Tatty Anton Smith
God is with us most in the space between moments.
He rests in doorframes as we move between rooms.
In the floor below a candle as it falls from a bedside table.
In the feathers of a bird’s wing as it flies over our heads.
In the heavy clouds that signal rain.
In the silent eye contact of lovers and the air between their skin.
By Toby Dossett
The forest holds the language of grief
With a fluency I am yet to master
Saplings bow under the weight of the sky
That speaks only in questions
A stag’s steps are forgotten promises
Moving like the edge of a dream
The shadow of a boy I once knew
Is he watching me like I want him to?
The hawk tears too
Crying, waiting
What does it hunt
If not the silence between us?
Like when I call the stag
But my voice is a stone that sinks
He tilts his head
I’ve stopped longing and he knows
The laughter we left hanging in the branches
Alike the memories we whispered to the fire
Now dust upon dust
Was it you who taught me
How to carry the weight of an empty clearing
Or was it the wind
Always pulling, always leaving
To become is to mourn
Still, the forest holds us
Roots tangled with absence
By Muna Mir
In January I dreamt you’d been resurrected.
Walking through the woods,
I watched the colours shift
For the first time
When the sun hit your eyes.
The clenching of my stomach, the serpent
Wrapped twice around my chest,
Tempting and stifling. The memory
Of restraint
When the sun rubbed
At your temples. Smooth skin
And your golden hair
Falling over
That temple.
I’d only noticed
The colour of your eyes
The week before.
How often I have regretted
Not noticing sooner, not
Nailing you to a cross
To stare at your eyes forever
By Olivia Petrini
in the morning I know myself best
my shoulders light and sliding
from the iridescent walls
stretching limbs to trace the
embossed red contours of the map
and you, across the way.
we could criss-cross, you know.
collide, the embryonic scavenger,
tiny neanderthal with a mallet
in one hand,
a stone grasped tightly in the other
staggers over flints like a rock-hopper
to the tangled white arms
which glint up from the sea.
I untangle myself from your embrace
to clamber over the slick roof tiles
and perch at the peripheries
senseless by the lazy messes
of the afternoon.
we advance along the beach
the sunlight bleaching our eyes
a civil orange, rolled between
both palms you cast into the
sky and back again with a
thud
which might once have been a moon
now scatters the bully-rooks
loose from their briar
up into black trees
and once again we retire to
the shadowed nooks of the night.
By Woody Jeffay
Winter’s maiden frost clouds up my window
Through drawn blinds, dulled sun caresses my face
Outside icy grass crunches soft below
Winter’s presence announced with such cool grace
I’m awoken from autumnal slumber
From the depths of sleepy October hush
To mild morning air and misty splendour
The echoless chirp of a lonesome thrush
I stop and watch as she glides above me
Effortlessly she drifts with the wind’s will
Bound to nothing but air, she seems so free
And I swear, in this moment all is still
Stark-blind and cold there’s a peace in the air
The winter sun warms my soul – all is fair
By Esme Bell
Like shame, you stop me sick:
Heaving at your foot, damp sickle
By my feet – who turn away, afraid.
But you, unlike me, can write in silver;
and what plains are forged,
and acres tended, and quiet empires
felled by you, unshelled warrior.
Naked bodkin, singular em dash –
command your line, your road. A car
threatens, and like a dare, you stay.
I won’t think of the wet starburst,
your treasure gorged and spilt as
guts, sharing now with the sky.
I will walk instead around, and keep
an eye open for hedgehogs.
By Saoirse Pira
On the bank of the river in
early October, I fall fast
and in love with Living.
It is a prayer–
when I fall to my knees
in the grass, when
the trees dance in the wind,
and the woods sound like waves.
I pray there for plenty. For
so much sun, for something to love
like the bank loves the bluebells
and the water-mint. To care because
I can, to love because I must.
When I die, as I know I will–
let it be here, let it be
like this. With the wind in
the trees and the dance like the
waves. Let it be kind.
I can only be as gentle as
A prayer on my knees by the river.
By Madeline Harding
Tonight my sadness has a sound,
It seems to fill my nose and mouth,
Seeping in and drowning out,
The world as it’s known to be.
Darkness wears me like a shroud,
Soaked and wet it pulls me down.
To my feelings I am bound.
I want to get back to me.
