written by Elle Tan Villa. Elle (she/her) was a proud member of Sutton Park School’s Poetry After-school Club. Who was also given the chance to help write a speech for Irish Senator Sharon Keogan, commemorating International Women’s Day 2021. She has worked as an intern with the following groups Supply Change, Split Banana and IntoGames in which she conducted/wrote interviews, informative papers and personal blogs.
I make a wish and think
how awful it is
to be shredded by breath.
A thousand white hairs
without compass,
without regard,
I watch them drift,
Bearing the winds,
Bearing my breath,
In the depths of my self-preservation,
I call a friend so that my body can cling onto each syllable she speaks;
To hear a voice that wasn’t my own.
She tells me about the villages in Estonia,
The thousand-year spell
Of thatched roofs, wattle and daub,
Small decorations on every living room wall,
Old women hanging clothes, telling each other of daily happenings, calling in their children to eat.
And there is nothing beyond this,
There are no hidden truths to uncover,
Everything you need to know, in plain sight,
The whole universe seen from a bedroom window,
There are no Gods, only the stillness after finishing morning cups of coffee.
She tells me,
“This is who we do it for.”
And I’m looking at strange pictures
Of people I’ll never know
In even stranger times; separate to mine,
And something beyond me stretches
To meet them,
For a moment I wish,
To bury myself in the soil beneath their feet,
And bring them flowers.
Image: Untitled 2 by Conor Bailey
Conor Bailey is a final year History and Politics student and they enjoy taking photos. They prefer to take clean minimalist photos with a few bright colours that show the texture of the spaces around us, but still enjoy scenes of nature and the shapes of urban buildings.
