Four Poems

by Sophia Papasouliotis

The lesbian commune (or a simple life with You)

We’ll wake with the hens

and the babies

and their mothers.

Our bare feet will pad softly

on our wooden floors, socks

kicked off at the end of the bed.

You’ll smile at me

across the island, wry

from behind your fringe.

You are not an early bird, but we treasure this time all the same.

You fill in the crossword that I discarded last night in frustration

and I boil the kettle,

and steep the tea,

and clink the spoon clumsily against the mug’s china rim

so you can’t hear how loudly

I love you.

untitled salad poem

I have large front teeth; space to acquire

spinach and kale and greens of all sorts.

Space for you to point it out

and for me to laugh a bucking, great laugh

and say

God I’m such a mess

what would I do without you

Inventory of a bag

On my last day, she hands me a carrier bag.

40p a pop, now,

she tells me,

Might as well use it again.

It’s silly, really,

how my own possessions feel so much like a prize

for surviving the odds -

myself.

Each item is just as I left it

because time doesn’t exist in a white box:

contact lenses floating like oysters under razor lids;

the cord of a dressing gown, the tie of a pair of tracksuit bottoms

that I know for a fact don’t fit;

a bottle of perfume that came in half-empty

and now seems half-full.

Whitebox

We count our lives in endless days that taste

of cheap orange squash

and resentment - bitter on the

tongue, medicine ceremoniously swallowed

then spat under the running tap.

We are too weak to stand,

too ill to sit for more than a bated breath.

Counting time like calories,

a shoestring budget of minutes and mouthfuls

(never truly full, never more than a bite).

If I’d known you in a different place

would we have been friends?

Would we have conserved energy

for the simple pleasure

of being in each other’s company?

Life is short

and we know it more than most.

We who have traded our own precious lives

for compliant

and attempted

and, more often than not,

refused.

I realise now that I don’t know much about you,

that I never have.

You’ve got a brother, or maybe it was a dog.

Your mum left but I think she’s back now.

You wish you hadn’t been born.

There’s a girl in here that you once tried to love.

You like living, but not enough to start

again.

BIO: Sophia Papasouliotis (she/her) lives in the South-West of England. She writes about the things she can't (or doesn't want to) say, and her poetry has been published in journals such as JAKE and No Tokens.