izzy

tension between arid earth and heavy sky,
taut and hot and making the air expand
until eventually the sky gives in and breaks
pours itself down all over the scorched dirt

*

sarah

I have invented a new type of Swiss Army Knife.
Gone will be the scissors, the blade, the file.
In their place, a rabbit’s ear. Soft and lucky, to remind us that superstition can be a comfort in the face of cruel realities.
Tucked in there, too, a bell, to sing out in joy, to solemnly toll grief. Its peals will carry great distances, to remind us of the power of truth.
Folded away also, a single warm sock, humorously coloured and carefully knitted to remind us that loss is inevitable, but so too is love.
The corkscrew can stay.

*

izzy

1. I want to look up videos of baby pandas and show them to the whole cabin, because they seem tense. ‘LOOK AT THIS BABY PANDA, AND TELL ME IT’S NOT THE CUTEST THING YOU’VE EVER SEEN’. You can only get internet in the air on fancy airlines. Ryanair is not a fancy airline. It is the exact opposite of a fancy airline.
2. Flying over the alps in a crowded Ryanair plane is probably one of the greatest things you can do. If there are gods, surely this is where they live. Or some of them, at least.
3. The little girls across the aisle are wearing matching rainbow zig zag dresses, and white leggings and white socks with frills around the ankles, and even their white sequinned shoes match. Their headphones are different colours, but the same brand.
4. When we pass over the alps I’m listening to my favourite mixtape and this really dancy electro tune kicks in just at the moment I’m going ‘wow’, not really believing I’m actually looking at the Alps from the air and wondering if that’s even the Alps because I’m terrible at geography. No one else really seems to notice, me craning my head looking around crazily around the cabin to check if anyone else is going ‘wow’ or just kind of glued to the windows with awe, synth and percussion pumping through my head. We’re floating over this stupendous bunch of mountains in clouds that look like super slow-motion photos of exploding icing sugar. They look simultaneously edible and terrifying.
5. The littlest girl in a zig zag dress and white sequins across the aisle decides to try and start changing her own nappy. She just stands up on the seat – she’s got a row to herself for some reason – takes her leggings off, and starts undoing the nappy, telling her Mum in the row in front it’s wet, her Mum replying ‘mm, ok, well -‘ without acting on it yet or even really looking. I thought nappies were too complicated for toddlers to operate, but now that I think about it, that seems ridiculous. It does seem strange though, that you can be capable enough to dress, undress and change your own nappy but you still go ahead and pee in your pants.
6. I somehow find a photo of my ex boyfriend with my dead budgie on my laptop while waiting for the connecting flight in Dublin. I think about how in a way everything that photo captured is now dead and I think about impermanence and I have to remind myself that even though he’s posing, pouting a fat kiss to the blue ball of fluff, that was the only time. I don’t think he liked my budgie. I guess not many people did. He kind of hated everyone back, except me. I loved him. We had an understanding. Still, he was mad when I moved out and left him to languish in a corner at my Mum’s house. I still feel bad that I didn’t bury that tiny feathered body that loved me for 10 years myself. That my sister had to be the one to make sure the dogs wouldn’t dig him up.
7. The sunset’s roaring, and I think it looks like someone’s simba’d a smear of blood all over the horizon’s forehead. I can’t decide if we’re flying under the sunset or in it.
8. In a hotel room in Sicily with all these tiny bottles of shampoo and mini soaps and shoe polish and disposable slippers thinking ‘thank god they provided a toothbrush too’ and ‘this is a big-ass empty bed’. The crusted blue on the shower is so vibrant, I know I must really be in the Mediterranean. The water probably has more minerals, is more virile, knows what it wants, running over my distended belly swollen with the cheesy pizza that I should have known better than to eat.

*

sarah

High above the world where the thunder brews
She looks down and sees the circling tigers sneering in the dark
And the soft pink-nosed rabbits huddled in the street lights
Slicking back their ears rubbing ash into their fur
Blinking away tears as the battle lights fill their eyes
Shuddering as the growling rumbles sickly in the night
She wraps the clouds around her and wills sleep to come
Spits out lightning to drown out the horrors in her head

*

izzy

broken computers are the saddest thing
all those qwerty keys reclining in dumpster limbo
begging for some fingers to run across them
and remember the words that used to spill
into these long obsolete micro-chips

*

sarah

Around my raised finger folds a small band of silver
The fridge door slams and I catch my own shudder
The night is a huntress and she roars at the doorway
A bear with a bow, pursuer and pursued
Fletching her arrows with half-cocked breaths
Tipping their ends with a crescendo of fear
This flesh is no refuge from the scourges of thought

*

izzy

the taxi driver reading stars from the gutter
Mariah Carey’s still looking good
she’s got a younger man, laughing eyes
and the perfect nose for kitty-litter liner

*

sarah

There’s a well inside me, a well, and it’s burst all its buckets and the women are wading in ankle-deep shoulder-deep to snatch the bouncing children who are floating off to Charon.
The dams are all bloating and the waterfalls are roaring and the rats in the sewers are learning to swim. I’m the girl with her finger in the wall of the dyke and I’m stroking the water as it slinks past my knuckles and whispers ‘There’s not a man among them who doesn’t deserve to drown’ and the water in my belly is crying for its mother and my veins are all bulging to be opened and freed and I’m crying and crying to get the water out faster, crying and sweating and drooling and pissing, and I think of my mother with her face a red O and I think of my sister with her knees caked with blood and I think of my cousins all seeping like sponges and I let go, I let go, I tear my finger right out and the waves come on down like a Price is Right winner, like a choir of angels, like a drunk benediction, and I breathe in the bubbles and I’m lighter than heaven and I’m dancing destruction a hundred feet under and I’ll teach them to do it, they’ll see it all coming, all roaring and foaming and blurting victorious and the last thing they’ll think of is little old me and the water they found in my eyes and my cunt and my lover, she sighs. I shake between her knees. She reaches down like a god and strokes my face, whispers ‘Thank you.’ Whispers ‘You flood me.’ Whispers ‘Now, sleep.’

*

izzy

I picked the perfect rose for you
and swallowed it whole
thorns catching in my voicebox

*

sarah

I’ve got a new crest for the USA:
It’s a man fellating a handgun, and it’s blowing out his skull
I’ve got a new motto for the world:
It’s ‘We are the disease’
I’ve got a new message for the universe:
It’s ‘We are crueler than anything alive’
It’s ‘We do not deserve forgiveness’
It’s ‘God help the children’
It’s ‘Trust no-one’
It’s ‘How could this happen’
It’s ‘Turn back now’
It’s ‘Crush us to nothing’
It’s ‘Don’t try again’
It’s ‘Turn around and don’t stop ever stop running’

*