Killing Time

Poem
Written By Louise Machen

An arm, heavy across my breasts,

steals the day from beneath worn sheets

and when I look at him

I feel you

tapering into pockets of darkness.


I have been stripped down 

by time and an unquenchable thirst for gin —

your memory on my skin:

that unconquerable something.


Maybe one day 

you’ll do me again 

like a bleary-eyed drunk

plundering what we left behind

(residing in parenthesis).

Cover photo by Bernadetta Watts

Louise Machen


Louise Machen is a Mancunian poet and a graduate of The Centre for New Writing at The University of Manchester. Her poetry likes to explore the complicated relationships between people and the world. She has most recently appeared in The Poetry Bus, Dreich and Sound and Vision – an Anthology from Black Bough Poetry. You can find her eating Belgian waffles on Friday nights or, alternatively, on Twitter @LouLouMach

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