Poetry by Natascha Graham

             Bart Everson CC



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When Gillian’s Here

They’re loud tonight.
These voices that clamour.
Gillian’s here. 
Standing by the kitchen window with the sky behind her - as sullen and moody as she is, shot through with the deepest blue of the darkest night.
She’s been standing there for a while now, and she hasn’t said a word.
She’s running the tip of a finger over a burn on the side of her hand.
Just at the base of her thumb.
She’s done it getting a cake out of the oven. A week ago.
One she’d made. Which isn’t something you’d imagine she’d do.
But she did. She does. And it tasted good, but the scars still there, and in this cold winter, in this kitchen that’s stayed dark for too long, the scar turns purple, milky, and she worries at it,
Because she doesn’t want to look up.

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Raised simultaneously by David Bowie and Virginia Woolf, Natascha Graham writes fiction, non-fiction and poetry, as well as writing for stage and screen. She lives with her wife in a house full of sunshine on the east coast of England. Her play, How She Kills, was performed by The Mercury Theatre in August 2020 and broadcast on BBC radio in September. My second play, Confessions: The Hours, has been performed by Thornhill Theatre London, and both have been selected by Pinewood Studios and Lift-Off Sessions as part of their First Time Filmmakers Festival 2020. Her poetry, fiction and non-fiction essays have been previously published by Acumen, Litro, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Gay and Lesbian Review, Yahoo News and The Mighty.
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