After we fucked on the classroom table
I felt a searing need to be alone:
to make my own way out into the dark,
walk the knotted miles of country lanes home.
Snow was falling: slow shivers of wax
from the high, guttering candles of the night.
The coiling lanes slid smooth as skin, as far
as childhood: snow seemed tied to any time.
And so much blankness still ahead of me
unmarred save for a thin spine of prints: a trace
made small against the vastness of the new –
some formless creature that I couldn’t name
that stopped for just a moment, paused, and still
uncomprehending, carried on its way.
Jacob Silkstone graduated from the Creative Writing MA at Lancaster University with a distinction and has recently worked as a primary school teacher in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is a poetry editor for The Missing Slate, and has previously been published in Ink Sweat & Tears, The Cadaverine and Cake Magazine.
Very good piece. I love the sudden jolt in the first sentence and the grey quality of solemnity and vastness.
These words would make a great song for the Cure, and from me that is a huge compliment.