in april 2024, i completed escapril using both the official prompts and those of jasmine higgins. four consists of my favourite poems from that time. trigger warning for discussion of drugs (4) and eating disorders (30). stomach acid - 30 was first published on eunoia review.

eye contact - 3
you’re on my lap, facing me.
gentle fingers comb through
my hair as though they hold
something precious, and i can’t
help but to arch into your touch.
i cradle your face in my hands —
deep, honey-brown eyes gaze
back at me. there’s an emptiness
there (and in my own) but if i
consume enough of you i might
feel better. maybe you will too.blackout // trip - 4
snow angels form
in my mind as white
as the medicine
we grind up and snort.
i lay next to you and
embrace the haze, the unknown
and my mind starts to
go blank. under the lights,
we cannot be stopped.
under the lights, we can
do what we want.
you murmur things that
do not matter, as nothing
matters when it is you and
me and the ceiling
shining from above. fluorescence
meets my eyes and you laugh
when i squint. i cannot see
you anymore. i cannot see
anything anymore.just haze.buried in boxes - 6
every photograph i have ever
pinned on my corkboard is
in a box, labelled “bedroom 3”.
when we moved, i could not bear
to open the box and be met
with your empty stare.you tore my heart out of my
chest just days before the move,
and in my anger (in my hurt,
in my pain) i stabbed the photos
with the pins that held them,
leaving you blank and
expressionless.i didn’t throw them away—
i don’t know why. i wanted
to, surely i did, but there was
just something about that
polaroid— your squint
because of the flash, your
hands around my waist.we moved six months ago,
and that is how long it’s been
since i last saw the photos
(since i last saw you) but
every detail is on the tip
of my tongue because it
was mine. you were mine
and i was yours, but nowwe are as buried as those
polaroids, and i will never
know you again.posture - 11
there is a shame about you, my love.
you could tower over the world if you chose,
proud as a giant, my very own
lady liberty.
proud eyes and your crown of green,
you could have anything you so desired.instead, your spine curves and bends
like the labyrinth in your brain.
i cannot read you — maybe no one can.
i do not understand why your glowing skin
is tinged sickly green, when it could be you
who eats the world.solar eclipse - 12
march 20, 2015
i saw a solar eclipse that day.
partial. our teacher let us out of
class to marvel at it. we weren’t
allowed to look, but i scorched
my eyes nonetheless, the ring
lighting a spark in my heart.april 8, 2024
a solar eclipse was seen in america.
my friend in buffalo saw totality
at 2pm. i spent the whole day
watching videos, finding photos,
mourning the pacific division
preventing me from seeing the light.september 23, 2090
i won’t see this eclipse. i’ll be long
dead by the time it passes over britain,
my bones breaking down under
the earth, an unrecognisable phantom.
still, i’m sure that the rare sight
will bring my spirit some peace.end of the world - 15
i’m on the beach when the world ends.
the announcement of the incoming
meteorite sent the world into panic,
but not us. it’s set to hit europe
head-on, killing the majority of the
population. anyone who isn’t instantly
dead on impact will be killed by the
inferno, and if not then the cancer
will destroy them from the inside-out.
the meteorite is hungry for more,
it wants to consume everything in it’s
path, including us — but we don’t flinch.
our bags are packed. since i read about
vesuvius as a child, i knew what we
needed to do. we’re as landlocked as
it gets in england, but we make the drive
to the nearest beach and i lay in
your arms. it’s august but it’s 40 degrees.
i feel myself burning under your touch.
when the meteorite hits, i hope
we’re preserved. i hope that anyone who
survives can find our bodies, embraced
in eternity, and the remnants of society
can dream about how it used to be. i hope
that little girls who know deep down that
they love other girls can see us and know
that throughout history, they’ve always existed.desire in a dark room - 22
you are darkness itself, the shadow
in a pitch black room. your caramel
eyes and mahogany skin disappear in
a room tenebrous as you — i catch
you out the corner of my eye, darting
like a hare out of sight.you are desire itself, my hand
brushes your hip before you slip
away again. you fall through the gaps
between my fingers as i reach for you,
a flicker of breath, the whisper of skin
just out of touch. i chase the scent
of you lingering, heat that fades too soon,
a warmth dissolves in the air.you are the absence i ache for,
a half-formed memory on my tongue,
the taste of something i almost had.
the promise of you slips like smoke
from my grasp, and vanishes into
the night.stomach acid - 30
i learn that the growling white noise of my stomach
is the one situation that i can keep firmly pressed
under my thumb. my oma was smuggled from germany
to england by the shadows of people she was too young
to now have memory of, but eighty-five years later i am
trying to shrink myself to insignificance.her parents were too busy being swallowed up by
zyklon b to know their daughters and i wonder if she ever
feels resentful that she was dragged screaming from
her family to live in pain instead of dying in the arms of
her mother. she was too young to remember kristallnacht but
her sisters would tell me that the glittering refractions of
broken glass would have been beautiful were it not for
the seven years that followed.my girlfriend tattooed a star on my ankle when we were
sixteen, and i have never seen my oma so furious as when
she, a dog at its prey, rounded on me with screams of
paskudnik. her tattoo remains embedded on fragile skin,
history injected into the ink. it doesn’t feel like my history,
when i disrespect her memory with my emptiness.i dream about my ergroßeltern and they ask if i know what
it means to be a link in an unbroken chain. my catholic
mother would laugh at the idea, taking pride in the pliers
she used to remove my link. i do not feel unbroken when my
lungs fill with stomach acid as i empty myself, but i tell them
i understand and i tell them i love them.flames flicker in every friday and i cannot help but see
my oma in them. each whisper of light in the dark is a whisper
from the past, a reminder of faith that refuses to die even
if it’s quenched by acid. in the quiet, i thumb through photo albums,
looking at the sepia-tinted smiles of relatives i never knew but
think about every day. i can’t look in the mirror without seeing
the eyes of my great-great-grandmother who doesn’t know that i exist,
the nose of my great-uncle, the hair of my oma. i see my place
in the tapestry, but i am unable to weave myself into it.i think about wasting away before i can teach my children
the songs of our ancestors, before i can prove that we are still here,
that we were worthy of saving. in the stillness of the night i find
a fragile peace — my oma did not choose escape but she was
gifted it and i cannot let her sacrifice go to waste. i may not be able
to stitch myself back into the tapestry, i can return my link into
the chain, and let my ancestors sew me back in.

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all poems from stonefruit were first published on eunoia review, (february 2025). their support is always appreciated.

preface
stonefruit wasn't a collection i set out to write — it found me instead. these poems came together in the quiet spaces, in moments when i wasn't searching for them but they arrived anyway. they spilled out like water overflowing a jar, unexpected and yet impossible to contain. writing this collection felt less like creating and more like uncovering — peeling back the skin of a fragile fruit to find its sweet, sharp insides waiting to be known, a story that was always waiting to be told.

between breaths
there was a field we used to walk through
and the grass bent in the wind like it knew
something we didn’t.
each step left a mark,
a reminder that we were once
more than just the spaces between breaths.back then, the sky was always the same colour —
something just shy of blue,
the way the world looks just before dusk
when the light wraps itself around you,
and you feel like maybe
this moment was always meant to happen.we used to lie there
watching the clouds drift like lost thoughts,
catching glimpses of things we never named
but somehow understood.
your voice would break the silence
with a soft hum,
the kind that the earth makes when it settles into itself.when the birds came,
flying in patterns only trees could read,
their wings cut through the quiet
to remind us that some things are always
moving, even when we don’t see it.i thought i would remember it all—
the way you smiled,
the feel of your hand in mine.
now it slips between fingers
like the light between the trees,
vanishing the moment i reach for it.sometimes when the wind picks up
i go back to that field,
not looking for you
but for the shape of what we left behind.
the sky still holds that same quiet ache,
but now it’s holding something else—
a space i’ll never fill,
no matter how hard i try to make it my own.shadowlines
i grew up in the corner of a map
where the ink bled into the edges,
where fences were a suggestion
and the roads weren’t brave enough to stay.
the field stretched wide
but the sky always stretched wider,
emptiness filling the cracks we couldn’t.you told me once
that shadows have no owners,
just wondering ghosts of bodies
borrowing light.
i traced yours anyway —
hands reaching, shoulders bowed —
as if tethering you to the ground
might stop you from leaving.there’s a kind of ache
that doesn’t break,
only hums like the echo of a storm
that didn’t fall here but tried.
you wore it like an old coat,
worn sleeves hiding
all the apologies you couldn’t give
and the promises you didn’t mean.i could have followed you,
but i stayed behind instead,
tending to the weeds
that whispered your name
in a language only i could understand.
isn't it cruel
that love can bloom
even in barren places?now i count my days
in the sway of cattails,
in the murmur of a creek
that knows my secrets and keeps them.
there’s nothing left of us here,
only shadowlines and sky —
and the ache of your absence,
a song the wind sings
when it thinks i’m not listening.stonefruit
you smelled like summers that ripened too fast,
like stonefruit bruising in the palms of hands
that didn’t know how to hold on without hurting.
your laugh tasted of wild honey,
sharp and sweet and too much at once,
and i drank it down anyway.we met at the riverbend
where water carved a story into stone.
you swore you could hear it,
the way it carried secrets downstream,
the way it didn’t care
what it left behind.
i watched you skip rocks
like you wanted to send them somewhere softer,
but they always sank,
didn’t they?there’s a part of me
still stuck in the heat of that august,
in the way the air pressed heavy
and time melted like wax under sun.
your voice drifted low and slow—
a tongue that could smooth edges
or break hearts.
i learned too late
that it did both.when the summer burned out,
you left me with the smoke,
and i stayed
watching the leaves curl into themselves,
watching the river forget
the shape of your name.
i told myself i wouldn’t write you down
but the words have a way
of finding the page,
don’t they?the memory of you clings
like the bite of an overripe fruit;
too sweet to spit out,
too bitter to swallow.
every summer since gnaws at my edges
with the taste of what i couldn’t save —
a harvest that came
and went
before i could gather it.the orchard
you always said the trees whispered louder at dusk,
their branches brushing secrets against the sky
like hands searching for what they couldn’t hold.
i never heard it,
but i watched the way you stood still
as if the air were telling you a story
that you were too afraid to interruptwe spent that summer
in the orchard no one visited,
your breath heavy with the smell of cider
and something sweeter i couldn’t name.
you taught me how to follow the veins of leaves,
to trace the scars of seasons
in the patterns of decay.
the leaves told stories of endings
before i even learned to listen, and
i told you it was a cruel kind of magic,
but you only laughed —
fading
the way dusk falls
without anyone noticing.sometimes i think we were meant to grow wild,
roots tangled beneath the surface,
branches pulling in opposite directions.
it didn’t matter how close we leaned,
the distance was already there.
you wore it like a second skin,
like you knew this was always the ending.the night you left,
i walked back to the orchard alone.
air so still it felt like a betrayal of movement,
and i could finally hear the trees whisper,
their voices brittle and breaking
like the snap of a twig
beneath an absent weight.they never told me where you went.
i searched anyway—
in the half-rotten apples clinging to branches,
in the shadows of empty baskets left behind.
but some things
don’t belong to you,
no matter how much you want them to.i keep my distance from the orchard now,
but it keeps its distance from me too.
the trees still bend toward the sky,
their branches bare,
still searching for what they’ll never hold —
and each time the wind shifts
i wonder if it carries you with it,
or if i’m still pretending
to feel anything at all.when the tide left
you found me at the water’s edge
where the sea unspooled itself
and left its wreckage on the shore.
shells broken into teeth,
glass worn soft as whispers,
and driftwood too stubborn to sink.you said the tide never really takes,
it only trades —
offering pieces of itself
for whatever it can carry away.
i wondered what it would take from you.
i wondered what it had already taken.that summer we walked the coastline
as if we could map the horizon,
as if the line where the sky meets sea
would give us an answer
instead of a question.
your hands were always full,
cupping sand and water like they wouldn’t
slip through,
but your voice was hollow,
echoing something i couldn’t name,
a wave that couldn’t break.when the storms came,
i found you waist-deep in the waves,
daring them to pull you under
pleading for them to let you go.
i called your name,
but the wind swallowed it whole,
the spray biting my skin
as the sea pretended not to hear.
you came back soaked to the skin,
hair tangled with salt
and eyes colder than the current.
you said the sea keeps everything it wants,
but i knew better —
it leaves enough behind
to remind me of what it took,
of what i couldn’t save.now when i walk the shoreline
your shadow clings to every tidepool,
and every shard of glass polished smooth
cuts me with what i remember.
the horizon still asks its question,
but i stopped trying to answer.
i just listen for your voice in the waves,
trailing off where water meets sand.
empty,
but still clinging
to the shore.we used to call it home
we walked through the woods where moss clung
to stones like secrets too soft to speak,
your hand brushing mine like a leaf falling
before it could reach the ground.
we traced shadows on the forest floor,
drawing paths that never led anywhere,
just circles, soft as rain.i remember how the sun would break through
the canopy in shards of gold,
your laughter carried on the wind
like a song that didn’t need words
but still meant everything.
the river knew everything, you said —
never forgot where it had been,
no matter how far it travelled.we spent that summer trying to forget
where we came from,
outrunning the past
by walking deeper into the woods —
but the earth remembers.
she keeps the footprints,
the spaces between words,
the way we used to lean into each other
like the branches of an oak tree
that never quite reached the sky.when i go back alone,
the silence is heavier than before,
the river running without you besides it.
i wonder if you still walk the same path
and if the trees whisper your name to the wind,
but i gave up asking.
i already know what they’ll say —
some things are meant to stay
buried in the soil
where they can’t be found
but always feel like home.before it even lands
i remember the way your voice slipped
between the cracks of quiet rooms,
soft like the hum of a song
too fragile to finish.
you never said goodbye,
but i felt it in the spaces between your words.we built something from moments
but it was never enough to hold us —
the way we tried to freeze time
only to watch it unravel
like thread pulled too tight,
the fibres fraying before they could settle.i catch myself looking for you
in the places where silence lingers—
the hollow of an empty chair,
the way the wind stirs the curtains
but never settles.
i almost hear you in the soft creak
of the floorboards,
nothing more than a ghost
caught in the dust.i keep reaching for what’s gone
but it slips through my hands
like water slipping through fingers,
the world blurring like watercolour
fading in the rain.
i try to find where you stopped being
real and started being memory,
but the line keeps shifting,
a shadow moving with the light.you left,
but i’m still here waiting
for something to fill the space between us —
wondering if anything ever really
fits the shape of what we lost,
or if we’re just waiting
for a ghost to fill the room.

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