Aspen Writes Poetry

 I  pulled my belt tighter, fingers slippery with sweat, each hole a reminder, an ache that wouldn’t forget. The leather shrank in on me, a harsh, deliberate squeeze, each notch a cut into my chest, a price I couldn’t appease. Once, it was room enough to breathe, to eat, now it’s just an endless loop of hunger in defeat. I can’t punch another hole, the metal tongue bit back, no more space, no more breath, no more promise of a crack. The fridge hums empty, a phantom’s warning to the heart, I’ve learned the shape of nothing, how hunger rips apart. The belt, once loose and gentle, now snarls in my ribs’ tight grasp, and I count the holes as if they’re prayers, or a future that might last. But each turn of the dial feels like turning back the clock,  to days when bread was heavier, and I didn’t need to beg the block. I could live with the ache of time, the wanting not to fall, now I’d settle for the hunger if it didn’t rise so tall. So I pull it tighter, another notch to bear...

  The map is a skin we are tearing at the seams, ink-stained by the nibs of men in distant rooms who trade in the currency of  Us  and  Them . They have turned the postcodes into battle lines, drawing circles around some, and crosses through the rest, until the very soil beneath our boots feels like a grudge. We are fed a diet of sharp, metallic words, detainment, mandate, lists , that sit like stones in the belly of the week. The air grows thin with the cold oxygen of suspicion, the way a neighbour looks at a window and wonders which colour is blooming on the ballot paper behind the glass. But look. The sun does not check the polling card before it warms the bricks of the terrace. The rain falls with an equal, silver grace on the Green, the Red, the Blue, the Reform. Our hearts are the same heavy, rhythmic clocks, ticking behind ribs that don't know a border from a fence. Put down the pen that marks the 'X' of hate. Instead, offer the small, subversive braveries: th...

They call it reform. But it’s not. It’s a party,  and it’s ugly. Ugly in the way a smile looks when it’s hiding hunger. Ugly in the way a promise sounds when you already know it’s broken. They stand on the podium, tie knots of words so tight you can’t breathe between them. They call it progress: but I see frost forming on my grandmother’s hands. Our grandparents are shivering through winters that look too much like the ones they thought they’d buried. Gas bills blooming like bruises on the kitchen table, blankets piled like apologies that never came. They fought wars— real ones. Theirs were in trenches, in factories, in fields of silence and mud. They came home with ration books and hope stitched into their coats. Now they watch as the ones to blame, theirs are gone, the new ones wear better suits; still talk about tightening belts as if the belts aren’t already cutting into bone. Reform, they say. Reshape. Rebuild. But they mean: remove, reduce, forget. It’s an ugly party, dancing...

When I first thought of death, I thought of the anemone,  red-mouthed, bold, a hush of fire opening on a winter hillside. It leaned into the light, not afraid yet. It said nothing:  but I heard it clearly. Like the kalaniyot in stories, crimson and defiant in the cracks of stone,  they spoke of blood and spring, of boys who never came home. A symbol, they said. Of peace. Of war. Of memory pinned to the wind. Then I thought more. I thought of the cyclamen, those bashful petals, how we’d find them shy beneath rocks, bend low to braid their blush into our hair. Now halos are not flowers, but flame,  and children who should be naming petals “he loves me, he loves me not” lie still beneath dust. Their hands will never finish the rhyme. They should be weaving crowns of narcissus, not wearing smoke. I thought of the Iris, pale as breath, rising from dry earth like something holy. My cousin bears its name,  half flower, half fire,  laughs like a song, refuses the d...

  When I First Thought of Death When I first thought of death, I thought of the poppy,  bold, red-lipped, peeping through death’s door like a child not yet afraid. It swayed. I stared. It said nothing, but I heard it. Like the poppies we were taught about at school,  bright on construction paper, pinned to coats, a symbol, they said. Of peace. Of war. Flanders Fields; men sinking into mud, letters in breast pockets, a silence that screamed. Then I thought a little more. I thought of the daisy, how we braided them into halos for our heads, giggling as the sun baked our knees. Now I see halos everywhere,  not flowers, but fire. Children who should be chasing bees, naming petals “loves me, loves me not” now dust, tiny fingers stiff beneath rubble. They should be wearing flower crowns. Not this. Then I thought of bluebells, how they arrive like a whisper,  soft at first, then all at once. A breath of hope, the way seasons announce themselves without asking. How chan...

  Tic A spark under skin, a bird trapped in the throat, a violin string pulled too tight— then let go. A shoulder shrugs without asking. A word flies loose like shrapnel. You think I’m broken. I think I’m fluent in a language you never tried to learn. You call it strange. I call it being  But he — blue vest, stiff jaw, radio crackle — he calls it  aggression. Non-compliance. A threat. He doesn’t see the twitch, the tremble, the tremor of trying not to be seen. He sees disruption. A reason to tighten the grip. To press me to the ground because I moved wrong. Sounded wrong. Looked  like something he was taught to fear. This body — so full of uninvited music — is not a weapon. But he’s never been taught to hear the difference.