Poetry by Alix Hearn

                       ​Holly Lay CC


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Hemlock, after Sylvia Plath 

When I was ten, 
I asked my mother the name of a place.
Medicine Hat, her response. 

I imagine you there, now,
raven hair, owl eyes,
gathering your crane bag 
of nettle, feverfew and dock. 

Not this clutching
of warm woollen blanket. 
Not this gasp of hospital bed. 

Not these dark spots,
mapping your veins, like wildfire. 

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At The Warren still searching for fish

You’re all at sea, 
she said. 

I wasn’t sure what she meant.
I imagined the worst - 

adrift, castaway, 
cast out, 
lost.

Drowning? 

Free, perhaps.

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Alix Hearn lives in rural Hertfordshire, in the UK. She has returned to writing poetry after a long time away....Alix writes about mental health, grief, ancestral trauma and relationship with the other-than-human. After an early love affair with acting and performance-making, Alix retrained as a Child & Adolescent Psychotherapist. You can find her on twitter @lixxyh. 

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