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To write without fear by Elizabeth Gibson



To write without fear


I didn't share the kestrel in the Gay Village years ago: my small red angel. 

I won’t share where deer run, where women run, bodies gloriously our own. 

My window view, my walk home, I paint with love, but I know and hate  

that there is a point beyond which I have to be vague.  

 

I won’t tell you I love you. I won’t mention names,


though, to my brain, word shapes are vital: the chewy green of her initial,  

the purple cut of yours. I won’t mention numbers, though they are also magic: 

ages, birthdays, the door numbers of my homes. I won't give the animal  

of the year you were born, Rabbit or Tiger or Horse, 


how I see it in you, how it spars with the Dog in me. 


Neither will I say your star-sign, but one near, say, not Scorpio, but Cancer, 

– but you are made of desert, not sea. When we baked gingerbread for Pride,  

I could say flapjack, to disguise the memory, but... I can’t do this neatly.  

I want to wrap you in power and poetry,


Can I do that without hurting anyone? Show me, love.







Elizabeth Gibson is a queer, neurodivergent poet based in Manchester, with poems published/upcoming in Atrium, Banshee, Butcher’s Dog, Fourteen Poems, Lighthouse, Magma, The North, Spelt, Under the Radar, and He, She, They, Us from Pan Macmillan. Elizabeth’s debut collection, A love the weight of an animal, will be published by Confingo in Autumn 2024.

 

Twitter/Instagram: @Grizonne


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