Poetry by Lucy Hurst

                      Tzef Pine CC



NOTES ON LOVE

you don’t,  you don’t know / i take a swig of sympathy in my morning coffee / i’m told i’m not alone /
but you’re not in my body with me / my dr drops me a subtle line on f*cebook messenger / loving you
feels like dying / i leave him on read so he doesn’t think i’m desperate / ‘there’s nothing left to be
done,’ he tells me / ‘i know, it’s easy for me to say.’ / he takes my hand in his, turns my palm to the
ceiling / & examines the sensitivity in each of my fingertips.
i gutturally cry to a man i have just met.

i’m so desperate for so many things / in someone else's room, prayer position on the bed / I’M SORRY /
i can feel my blood in rivers / i throw my affection around, hoping it comes back like a boomerang /
love me
love me
love me.     





NOTES ON HOPELESSNESS

even talking about good things taints them / i want to help others & talk about it without sounding like
a prick / trying to be kind is bloody hard / i want to have enough loose change / & my empathy to
stretch out far enough that it becomes useful.

i’ve been holding out for a divine intervention / an economy crash / a laptop background sunset /
someone’s book to drop / but rebuilding faith requires a level of patience that i just don’t have /
i carry my hope in private / that if i can’t have this world, someone else can / it’s easy to want to sink
this island into the ocean / maybe we should, now i think about it.





NOTES AT SEA

i walk with no real intent or direction / using a stick to etch swirls around my feet / i wonder what the
sea is thinking / if it thinks at all / HELLO, i write, WILL YOU SPEAK? / i look at the sea
cannibalising on the horizon / & feel a sense of gravity again / i wish i could feel this way all the time /
i’m scared about what sort of plastics are swirling around in there / & how much of it is my fault /
each time i think about the planet i want to think about anything but / 

in times of crisis, i give plants to my friends for them to repot / i like to think that between us we
could amalgamate enough plants that nature could reclaim itself /
i’m pulling out fishing rope from the sand / i see my family jumping through estuaries / picking up
pen lids and burst balloons / & the feeling of caring / feels like coming home. 

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Lucy Hurst is a poet residing in Lincolnshire. She is currently studying for an MA in Creative Writing at YSJ, and specialises in queer and disabled poets.