A heart like yours, I wonder, will it ever – just suddenly - stop beating? I cower to the shared fear of what is to, or may, be… I cover the rotting-dead thought of you with the black backs of my lids and my eyes cry, and my shoulders sigh you off of me quick. How young a heart, my sister, my funny friend. You irregular, intangible, ebullient, reckless, effervescent, live-for-the-moment singular soul in pain at present; forfeiting the Future’s power over your body; your mind neglects the humour in standing in just a thin, cotton, hospice pinny, exposing bare arse, and the irony in getting caught in traffic on Westminster Bridge strapped down in an ambulance, waiting for half of London to clear, and you hear your nonchalance utter: “It’s fine, honestly”. An attack shadowed by countless worries voiced from your limbs, lungs, liver – Sister! Stories you’ve heard online, assumptions you’ve made, and exhausted by diagnostic deliberation of your body’s symptoms categorised into sections – you tire: you scare yourself silly.
I. James
Isabelle is a 24-year-old PGCE English student at the University of Cambridge. Her Poetry has been shortlisted for the South Yorkshire Young Writers’ Competition 2018.