Remember summer?
They let us touch each other,
each moment mattered
skin simmered, we stroked freedom.
When autumn arrived, they laughed.

Flutter, flurry, fall
Flip my road a winter globe
Paint bare trees pretty.

But I won’t be cartwheeling,
I’d only fall on my ****.

Work? Still permitted.
If you’re still employed, that is.
Your windows are grey?
Just paint another rainbow.
Clap again if you fancy

Hello Tier thirteen
Keep your cages nice and clean
Purse your lips and nod.

I pop open the blister pack and poke the pill through,
dip it in sugar to mimic an advent calendar.
The doors are endless, a childhood dream.

I can’t get used to the lightness of despair.
I’ve mastered depression- damp, bell-heavy,
but despair?
It’s almost ethereal. Fairy lights in the breeze,
a brief twinkle
the wink of a tealight before it concludes.

The children hand me treasures they’ve found in the mud
Forest School, or playing outside as it used to be called,
before everything needed branding.
I smile, another leaf for my hair
more stones for my pocket. Anchors in open water.  
‘Are you okay, Miss?’

I sink into mauve bubbles, not trying to drown
only grounding my weight again.
Lilac shimmers the water and I trickle it over me,
smearing life across sallow skin.
My Rudolph earrings hang florid
tinsel etches my scalp. It’s the Nativity today
and my beaming face will echo that of the angels.
Happy.

Your aura consumes,
solar bright
red as birth.
I could give you the sky and still
you’d shrug off the clouds.
Your words puncture me,
pins through wet paper
salted scars needing ice cream.
Broken crystals, faded rocks splinter to
rubble in my pockets for open water
dragging me closer to you.

On the day I came to,
you stabbed me with ice
and shamed me for bleeding,
staining your bathtub black.
I grew back my colours in time,
doused myself in dandelions
whenever I felt you near and
gathered my shells
as you turned to shingle.
You planted flowers
and hoped I’d catch their scent in the breeze.
Forget me nots.






Jade Wright

On the day my Dad
Smashed in every window  
of Nan and Grandads house,
They told me the blood spots were
from the strawberry plants.

As Nan tiptoed by the pools of glass
Auntie Janet took me across the road.
We had orange club biscuits and milky tea, and Jasper the cat and Tots TV.
I pictured my Dad with his arm hanging off and sunk deeper into the armchair.

It was all smiles the next time he came,
The park with the maze and the video shop, and a banana milkshake and chomp bars before dinner.
He caught me staring at the purple scars and took my hand in his, swift as a vice.
There was a terrible accident at the factory.


Jade Wright