Articles

Sat in eerie silence, the kind that suspends, borrowing grief from the future. Reaching through with sticky hands, to steal something I can call mine.   In the same way, a sweet friend took the floor with him when he left. A souvenir for his struggles - will the feeling ever fade? The need to hold something close. To fold your palms tight,   to write it all down, in a language you understand. Does the book ache to return to the tree? It can no longer lend its knowledge to me.

I stand before you, farmers kin, my mother’s green thumbed girl. asking only, for a gentle kiss   to cheek. I’d fly to you– by wing or wind, simply for a glimpse.   I have nothing to offer but the dirt bedded under overgrown nails. And a vulgar honesty. Words by Bea Butterworth, she/they

You ask if I am happy to see you Well, is it me that asks or you? I cocoon myself underneath you and plead Yes, yes, I have missed you, I am joyous. You are not so sure.   Your mouth manoeuvres an upturning and eyes glisten in a way that says  Darling, I believe you. But I am not so sure.   Perhaps I do miss the way  I used to throw myself into the air  with a fearless gravity. The spinning and bending of body– Flesh as suspension, the air as a vacuum to move through. Perhaps

Far off, a flying stone’s throw from  the burrowed hill we stand on, paint is eating paint and picture is kissing with words There are colours in slump and  glassy glosses turning on eachother, making new colours: brown and orange Synecdoche is kissing with a tower Pink striped with a dull impasto white is rolling on down the hill like children in May A portrait of a grey veiled lady is kissing with with whilst the words in a tangle of hands and feet are coated in the soot of

I feel like I’m in a constant waiting game. Waiting for you to let me in Waiting to see you again Waiting for, forever. Time is suspended. Miles stretch like elastic Sound won't echo Foundations remain scaffolding and Everyone knows your name. The phantom I’ve framed my future around, Framed it for— Like a piece of unknown artwork, with an unwilling muse. Still, you hang on the interior of my mind. Is this a requited feeling? Do they know the artist or have I remained a frame

Pressed into my hands without consolation, already hemmed and labelled, size only guessed at. I learned its limits the way you know the seams of a borrowed coat: the stabbing pinch high in the underarm when I reach too far, the sudden gape when I bend, the slow drag across my back when I turn away. It comes with me regardless, clinging along my shoulders, cupping the base of my skull, settling over me with the dull inevitability of weather. Some days it is almost indifferent;

My mother once told me The sea has a way of attracting lost souls. It’s why there are cigarette butts between the sand. And the wind whips in wails, But when it carries me Away from the landlocked and lonely To a bed of brown tide. It feels a little more like being found. Words by Bea Butterworth, she/they

I’m awake by a jerk and very confused desperate for food and to fill this weakness I have felt since just eight the faintness that follows my journeys, conversations, forever marked by a stamp that is covered but always visible attached to signs impossible to ignore Big Bulky signs that map out my country strangers— an invite, to them, a promise of a box a promise of certainty a promise of explication. What on earth is attached to you? they’ll ask, those pryi

A Journey Through Girlhood as Told by My Notes App The consistent jokes I see online about stumbling across an emotionally charged rant...

Once, I drove through the Alps. Feeling free.    Before then, I slept on a terrace in Tunisia every day. Feeling happy.    And before...

The coffin closed on a Thursday, The call came in at eleven. It seems cruel That such defining moments keep coming at mundane times....

Leeds isn’t the sort of place that grabs you by the collar and yells, “Look at me!” It’s the kind of city that sneaks up on you, like a...

A creative piece in response to anti-abortion laws and attitudes. The lunar cycle is twenty-eight days long, The waxing and waning of the...

The summer before last, I visited a small Italian commune nestled in the Northern region of Lombardy. There I was publicly shunned. It...

Something splits in two when a person is assigned that label of “woman”. There is herself, that silhouette of a living, breathing shape...

They smoked heartily. Each inhale turned gloriously (and almost imperceptibly) into an exhale. Each and every muscle fibre let go. Each...

Notice that every window on your street is a square of other-world, each one saying THE EMERGENCY IS NOT IN THIS ROOM. Not in the...

The sky is edible. Sugary-sweet puffs of spun air and light are fluffed and pillowed against a vivid canvas. They blossom and bloom,...

Earthed in Leeds Your life is relentless And it will always be so Because you live seriously Manic or happy? I can only tell at the last...

Give us a Guinness, half a Stella, gin and tonic and A smile. Give us a smile, love. To smile or not to smile? That is the question If I...