Image description: LGBTQ+ pride rainbow colours textured as crinkled paperÂ
“Flower children” – Alice Watkinson
you are not stunted there is no need to arch and bend and fold and crease cup your bruised knees and stop repenting for you are an extension of the world and the air repeats itself through you you’re not transparent nor extraordinary allow yourself to twist to the sun and let it seep into the spaces between your cells there are hearts to break and women to love and violets to brush up against your ankles there’s sex to be had and gin to burn your lips and sky that stretches and stretches the universe may not expand just so it can keep holding you after all we’re just ants under the toes of giants but I was once told that while there’s air to breathe there’s love to feel and maybe one day we’ll believe itÂ
“Just a Crush” – Molly Evans
Your eyes open up a whirlpool
Inside my worst intentions, all sense
Seamlessly slips away.
My pinprick skin reddens on point
Every single time I sense
Your precious, lingering stare,
Far across the room.
And if this tension is
Just a product of my mind,
Then God, by God,
How lucky am I
To hold you in my dreams tonight.
I know you know I’m jealous,
Throwing me these signs
You play me like a fiddle,
And I’ll listen every time;
Your laugh is my
Own melody; looping soft
Stolen touches, frozen in time.
Possessive, I’m possessive,
In this new forbidden land;
I tried to mask my feelings
With my head deep in the sand,
But if we met tomorrow
And you let me in your life,
I’d merge our souls together,
In pleasure intertwined;
As one we’d fight the quarrel boughs
And dance in the night.
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