I touch my pulse to remind myself I am sane: blood is throbbing beneath my skin in every blue lilac vein. My hands tremble, the pillow and sheet echo every sound, every flutter of panic coursing - swift acting poison - through my limbs. And I know this is chemical, I know the … Continue reading Tiny deaths
I remember when you wished you had not spoken - three words which wrapped themselves like smoke around our ribs and settled, thickly, as ash on our lips. Three words that feel like glitter or dust yet taste sticky and sweet or bitter when consumed in a different light. And I felt like … Continue reading Unspoken
Originally published on Reedsy Discovery. Green’s collection, Gates, is refreshing, original and a book for the 21st century. Behind Green’s words are the stories, thoughts and feelings of a human being who loves, wins and loses too. Split into two parts, Gates is a collection of quiet, inimitable power. It begins with ‘Namesake’, a poem … Continue reading Review of Gates, Jay Green
There is something soothing yet macabre in watching you weed: pull up life from the ground only to discard it atop the compost. Perhaps it is the control you exert, life and death growing weary in your palms - perhaps it is the reminder of how indelicate human nature is, how brutally we shake … Continue reading Weeds in the patio cracks
Originally published on Reedsy Discovery. E. B. Howell’s As Much as I Care to Remember is a frank portrayal of living with bipolar disorder. Howell’s honest dedication to raising awareness about bipolar disorder delivers an empathetic and authentic narrative about Liddy, a woman battling the world around her and the multiple narratives spun by her episodes of … Continue reading Review of As Much as I Care to Remember, E. B. Howell
I love imperfect things: calloused hands, lying mouths, holes in the plasterboard, smeared bathroom mirrors, using a pint glass for the roses, illiterate spellings of sorry, tepid water and lukewarm feelings, confusing the consonants in love and lose. I cherish imperfect things in lieu of a reflection I still cannot love: calloused … Continue reading Pint glass – half empty
I walk through the woods and imagine it full of books: novels returning home, pages between roots, words manifesting within fleshy, breathing bark, dappled light adorning every dust jacket with sun spots as leaves curl around well-thumbed spines, earth settling into bookmark ribbons and wrinkled, ink worn skins. Poem: © Kristiana … Continue reading Home
September and I’m twenty. I’ve phoned my mum, 100 miles away, because I’m frightened I’ll die. My hands feel suspicious and I cannot trust my reflection, so tying myself to a Promethean rock seems the only option. I should be living in technicolour - I should be living with joy bursting between fingers and … Continue reading Promethean Sin
The light burning through the window fades - every cushion, floorboard and painting loses colour, the walls merge with the air and everything becomes a meld of grey and beige. The rain begins, then the hail. Ranks of interminable storm clouds throng, heavy, obscuring the light, refracting it upwards, away from our hungry eyes … Continue reading Goddess
Rain falls for the first time in weeks and the sky is a muzzled grey: every bloom and green field is diminished by half and the cat tracks in mud and wilted blossom from the trees. Life falls into monochrome - a sleep-deprived dimness as I watch each rivulet weave a fairytale down the … Continue reading Larkin sadness
