A Cave Waters Shadows

Eva Lewis, United Kingdom

i.
Growth too has a curfew, for example a dark
room descending on its stem, spine bending towards rock
-bottom. You do not need to say it more than once for a cave
ii.
to remember. I do not need my mother to repeat
I am a disappointment. I wore a hole
in my shoe. And because nothing truly disappears
I wore the inverse of that hole on my heel for two
iii.
weeks. A blister saturated into a dome. It leaked
when I popped it. Sobbing or drooling. The body after all
is mostly water. The difference between a tsunami and a beach
is the structure
iv.
of earth beneath it. What year 7 lesson isn’t Sisyphus
-bound? The mouth spoons each word round as
hunger; a boulder. My mother shoulders her
way up in my thoughts. Again. Ghosts are the same as
v.
the boulder. The absence in a cave is what
echoes. The wind with a snakes tail in it
rattling through this exposed house. Does the sun identify as
vi.
a rock, a planet or somewhere in between light
and ash? I identify as Neptune, all those rings like years
vii.
around my eyes. Ice and rock that could not be contracted
into a planet. I am orbiting the bad
viii.
decisions I made twenty years ago. Insomnia identifies as
purple. The sun a welt raised,
ix.
into a boulder. It is hunger. My mother pushes up
to the precipice of my lungs and dangles
x.
her legs thrashing: a child’s swing set. I seesaw on
the verge of tilted earth. I well
xi.
up. My mother shouts down to me, the water. My whole
body rings from her words, a stream circling a dropped penny.

Eva Lewis is an emerging poet and writer from the North-West. They are a self-taught poet, exploring mental illness, emotional inheritance, historical symmetries and neuro and gender divergence. Their work has been published among literary journals and anthologies including Y Gog: Surreal North Anthology; SINK Magazine; Cape Magazine; Young Identity: Ecosystems of Fury Anthology; their work is forth-coming in Ice Flo Press, Homecoming Zine and others. They have performed with Amnesty International and as part of the Young Identity collective.