by Charlotte Murray
You don’t seem felled by it
says the person who didn’t come over
until after I’d started my medication
I imagine a tree
split through
to the heartwood, expected
to be grateful that the axe
stopped
one stroke short
in time the gouge will start
to resemble a beaming smile
and birth bright green shoots
to disguise its splintered contours
but it will always sway and c r e a k
a little more in the wind
in the pointlessness
of another year’s
leaves drowning
in the stream
gloomy
shallows
the ground always much closer
than the sky.
Charlotte Murray is a Creative Future Writers’ Award winner, and won the Prole Laureate Poetry Competition 2024. She has been published in various magazines and anthologies, including Propel and Green Ink. Her pamphlet was longlisted for the Frosted Fire First Pamphlet Award 2023. She is a member of Hive Poetry Collective.
Emerge Literary Journal 