Hanging here, between time.
Across a table, cohesive with hours of spilled alcohol,
fingers swing closer to the candle, turning toward
each other to touch our heads, while outside conversation lilts
around us, we’re swaddled inside the pub. Every so often
we laugh between words, timing exquisite, caught in a
moment of electric delight, fuelled by whisky notes
of orange, of star anise, of cinnamon:
smells like remembrances.
Like taking my hand as we cross the road.
Look left, look right, see, all clear! Walk fast,
hand squeezed like a bellow, like a balm. Trust so full
in that version of me, so small. Lost now, to time’s
inconsistencies, time’s careless desire to move forward,
even though you must stop
to hang still.
SK Grout grew up in New Zealand, has lived in Germany and now splits her time as best she can between London and Auckland. She is the author of the micro chapbook “to be female is to be interrogated” (2018, the poetry annals). She holds a post-graduate degree in creative writing from City, University of London and is a Poetry Editor for honeyandlime Literary Journal. Her work also appears in Crannóg, Landfall, Rising Phoenix Press, Banshee Lit, Parentheses Journal, Barren Magazine and elsewhere.
More work by SK Grout
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