You write to prove you can still do it,
that somehow you are still alive. But the
lines never seem to click, words dying on
the tip of your tongue. Every summer is the
same now: a desperate need to return to what
is lost. It’s simple, really. You are a ghost in
a world full of ghosts. Your brain a bowl of
rotten fruit, a dried up lake. You rise early
before the sun, run until your heart forms
a thoughtless echo. You are trying to get
this right. This, being the rest of your life.
You kiss the ice, cut the loose end, rework
the fire in your blood. Still, there is nothing.
No sharp slap of resurfacing. The seismic gap
in your heart growing larger by the second.
What was it that you wanted exactly? A flint
to draw the spark with? An answer for every
question? Instead, you dream in absence, stare
at the letters of the months. You can’t see anything
when you aren’t really looking.




____

Jade Mitchell (she/her) is a poet & performer based in Glasgow, Scotland. She earned her BA in Creative Writing, Journalism & English at the University of Strathclyde, where she was awarded the Beatrice Colin Award for her experimental poetry dissertation. She is an Assistant Editor for Up the Staircase Quarterly. Her work has been published in numerous literary magazines, including Untitled: Writing, L’Éphémère Review, Inside The Bell Jar & Beech Street Review.