Dusk blinked:
the streetlamps woke up,
bleary for a second,
reaching for the alarm.
I catch:
a turquoise sky
climbing away from light,
webbed branches pulling
its silhouetted skin,
a particular kind of oil spill
across cloud canvas,
twiggy fingers waiting
for promised buds
of spring, in shadow’s glare
hidden.
Dusk rests:
in the still after rain,
when we breathe again. I see
a young boy/sprite in sage green
playing basketball outside the house
I always wonder about.
I catch:
lamps veiled by walls
of a quiet welcome hall
caring for shadows,
putting up ghosts for the night
to keep them away from public,
a safe house for those who dwell
in the dark spots behind eyelids
that appear when we slip into sleep.
The young boy/sprite
plays basketball in sage green
like he doesn’t care that I see
him, in my neon running trainers
with rain wisped hair.
Dusk: awake now,
holds him gently in her palms
as she does me – allowing us to exist
in pockets of our own silence.
Cradling Dusk: between the toes of
rain and summer and nighttime love.
Moonbeams: tie my shoelaces.
The unseen: tell me
“We hear you.”
Emma Haworth is a writer and content editor/page designer from Lancashire, UK. She recently completed her Creative Writing MA at Lancaster University. Her work has appeared in Lucent Dreaming, Popshot Quarterly, The Phare and as part of Portico Library’s ‘Rewriting the North’. In her writing, Emma enjoys focusing on place, especially spaces on the ‘edge’, between perception and reality, history and fantasy, noticed and ignored. She is currently working on her first novel; a magical realism novel set in the Victorian era, which explores spiritualism and womanhood.
photo by Jr Korpa (via unsplash)
Crow & Cross Keys 