in the hills above Vigo, Galicia
Perhaps I look lost up here, heavy and alone – but I have the pines and firs,
and I wander down the slopes of the mountain campus, catching Pokémon.
The air turns cool and soft. I catch an octopus. I take photos of the pink sky;
they will never come out right. I catch a bird, a fish, more strange critters
whose proper names I never remember. I stand under the chunky building
they call a bunker, but to me can only be a boat, slicing through the tree-sea.
Barely anyone lives up here, only us in the student digs shaped like a spider.
We sleep in its legs, in little rectangular rooms with long, tall windows
giving us ribbons of view: grassy mounds with orange cats, a pond of frogs,
a night full of crickets, heavy like me, and alone – but somehow also not.
Elizabeth Gibson is a writer and performer based in Manchester, UK. She is also the Editor and Photographer for Foxglove Journal. Liz has won a Northern Writers’ Award and been shortlisted for the Poetry Business’ New Poets Prize, and her work has appeared Cake, Cardiff Review, The Compass, Confingo, Litro and Strix among other journals. Liz blogs at http://elizabethgibsonwriter.blogspot.com and you can find her on Twitter and Instagram as @Grizonne.
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