THE FOLLOWING POEM WAS SELECTED IN WINGWORD POETRY PRIZE 2023 LONGLIST.

she asked me what I wanted to be when

I grew up, and I said with a sigh: breathless.

a winded echo, a fearful flicker, a lit handle,

side by side and twice the height, there when

I blinked colour into your empty wrist, did you

feel it? the love you left behind when you were

thirteen and craved the dark? I was there/I was

spirit and I was bone and I was the hate shoved

into the mirror, all cracked and soothed granite.

or do you not remember? my mellowed Macbeth,

life beside me is the fog and the fright, a myth you

tried to forget, a touch you would kill, if you could.

so what is it like? knowing that you live worse

than the girl in your nightmares? I never did care

like you wanted me to: the tick of a broken clock,

you said, and I did—tick. you saw me breathe and

you cried with one eye, fingers cinched and slipping.

I reached and you reached and the fallen wisteria out

the window whispered a story of pasts long forgotten,

plaid and old money and dust in our darkened fingers,

and I heard before you did: you can’t get past the glass,

affixed to something you could dig up, a web betrothed

and beyond: history, hidden and hollow, you would cry,

a breath, a lie, a girl and her innocence, or so the knife.

I remember: a day that fate spoke of with shaking

fingers, red string, shackled wrists and waning eyes,

she held my hands and we watched a part of you/me/

fade, written was our tragedy, high in the stars they took

from your little hands. do you remember? a cement smile

and the pale irises? burning cyphers, aconite and the ash

in your heart, love, how they tore you apart, a rusty blade

you’d learn to repurpose and lay down near our heart but

how could you not? familiarity, a curse, a thing of fairy tales

that made you despise Aurora: all destined and dissociative

and dying. all we’ve ever known is deep sleep and blue moon,

secret grey and then not. pray, tell me: am I truly so unlovable?