weren't you there the night they struck you down or some place yellowed with oil waiting for the last call touch and go on the other side of the phone his window swallowing cop lights like liquor into a pitch black gut you pour out of every morning this growing bellied nausea you keep steady as plates steadier than his hand on the baby kick on the crushed mattress clogged with cannabis a living room pasture before this country smoked you out like a culling with the sticklebacks caught up this time and you watching his clinched wings buoyed above their sirens and didn't he kiss you once and call you that as if your tongue wasn't punctured into foreignhood as if this would survive the storm and as if dream could be for you more than a verb
Downtown.
It's the thick quiet of winter and I'm outpacing the clammy sort of cold you get when your body is exorcising loneliness. I'm running out of angles to turn; I'm turning to pockets of tree-lined darkness: to hide and shake off the calloused print of streetlamps on my vapoured-up glasses, and watch the olive-green groves get licked yellow by bicycle lights in squeezes of electricity. Last night, across the street, I did this too. Brushed past kids in heavy coats (and one of them halted the brake on their bike to let me pass) and the metallic press of those gears sifting through the wind sounded like summer so briefly, I could close my eyes and taste its phantom of promises, how daylight made it innocent to be pink and restless. I walked around the sequestered frozen grass and youth was coagulating around all the stop signs and sleeping security guards. You dog–– stop playing dead and show me where it glitters. Show me the teething skyline of high towers, your men of red lips, show me how our bodies light them up. A city is no more than a chronic infection, and I counted, I did: on the cream moonlight of that twenty four-hour foyer to harbour time like a refugee. But now that there's new money between us and I'm on strictly non-speaking terms with midnight, these weekday confessions are atrophying like long-distances phone calls. You cursed me down, you whore, solitude creeping in like the seasons, no one to weigh the cellophane wrap of thickening duvets. You’re no good for me. I have to love you all by myself.
Angela Sun is a writer from Edinburgh and a student in Evolutionary Biology. Her hobbies include guitar playing and arguing about the practical applications of her degree. You can find her work upcoming in Heavy Feather Review and The Summer Gothic anthology from Panorame Press. She is currently celebrating Michelle Yeoh. You can find her on Twitter @blessphemey.
