You shed your skin with sinful ease as time runs to keep up.
Ten weeks worth of smashed cots burn bonfire-bright in your belly
despite the December rain. You throw his letters to the wind now,
you wash your own hair now.

These are not her words, they are yours. Grown up hands
paint grown up tattoos onto each morning;
Sometimes blood red and running, sometimes grey whispers.
Still, it is you sinking those day old fangs into the newborn week.

Everything hurtles past your midnight train.
You part the red sea and home applauds your curtain call like a laugh track;
The critics won’t caw until morning now.
You hold Earth between thumb and forefinger;

Where to next then?

by Isobel Riggs