magazine

Mystic Owl

moth wings made of silk and broken glass



Charlotte Amelia Poe

Poetry

I don't think I know how to love you quite right -

But I know that when I bury you I will close your eyes first so that the dirt doesn't blind you.
Shaking hands scattering clods of earth and I will think of nature and tree roots and green
growing things, all the things you could and will be, and not the pale bloated blue veined thing that is, and was, and can never be again.

If we are oblivion experiencing itself in real time, know that there have been so many oblivions I have been happy to share with you, squinting into the sun as you insisted on a photo with an old camera you picked up at a thrift store - light leaks on every frame, but you never minded.

You would press your hands to the frame of my ribs and spread your fingers wide and it felt like you were holding the whole of me, touching right down to the bone with the scorch of yourself, branding me irreparably for anyone else.

How, you hollowed me out and filled me so entirely that all anyone could see when they looked at me was you, you, endless you, a void staring into a void and loving itself, inky black and all I knew how to do was to fly to the flame, to keep burning up in the night, because they said it was a blood moon and if the sky is red then everything is monochrome for a few hours.

Cold now, morning dew shifting and dripping off grass and stinging nettles and I will tidy this bed I have made, I will lay flowers over it and I will mark it with a symbol neither of us believed in. And I will hold your name in my mouth like holy water, too precious to swallow or spit, until I forget how to breathe, until you drown me again, one last time.
About the Author
Charlotte Amelia Poe (they/them) is an autistic nonbinary author from England. Their first book, How To Be Autistic, was published in 2019. Their debut novel, The Language Of Dead Flowers, was published in September 2022. Their second novel, Ghost Towns, was self published in 2023. Their second memoir, (currently untitled), will be published in 2024. Their poetry has been published internationally.