--------- frances

In the dirt field ahead a woman rides her horse in circles, chased by the dust. She thinks of feeding them sugar cubes in the purple morning. Their velvet lips bigger than her hand.

How the clouds there come flowing from fibrous bunches, like a cotton ball attracting together backwards, rather than pulled apart; the birds, robins and chickadees and the sounds of them; the way her hair twists around the red root of a sprig of moss. The melancholy crown of the willow tree.

I am only 30 years in the future, but she still stands watching those horses. There’s a baby soft spot where her dyed red curls split at the back, pink scalp untouched from the sun.

--------- 25 / valentines

The wind is crisp on the ears and I'm thinking of the soup I'll make later and the onion skins that are rustling in my bag. I was told yesterday by a friend of a time his young body was sold for one hundred dollars. Quickly, it becamme another way the earth has been spinning mme faster. I try in vain to hold mmy fingers over the pulse of time, to keep my feet light and dodge the wheel.

to hold open the window.

The sun dips faster than I can catch up and I follow the river of people travelling home to their own.

I try to keep myself armoured,

but come to find out that I've always been injected with that regrettable soreness, a swelling bulb in the chest –

that thing which makes my eyes sting.