Using a time machine donated by the H.G Wells Appreciation Society Charlotte Brontë
visits a 7-Eleven at 23:07 when they have run out of 32oz sodas and are wanting to close,
sparking the resurgence of unintentional Leninism
Charlie chews her hair and stares in disbelief at a passing dirigible. If only I were a balloon,
Charlie thinks, shunting ice with a straw she invents thanks to the overactive imagination
given to her as a child. Charlie is a hair and her hair is a thought. She was once an unopened
packet of Camel cigarettes saved by a collector before the F1 sponsorship fell through. The
mascot always looked so friendly. Charlie exposes a thigh to a passing long-haul trucker. It is
the colour of an Antipodean mountain range at dawn. He grunts and returns to his air-
conditioned cab. I right fancy a Fanta Lemon, Charlie tells the ghost opposing her. The ghost
is made of hair. Crafted into being by willpower alone, its mass emerged unironically from a
plughole in the unisex bathroom. As the ghost is made of hair it is also a thought and
therefore a dream. The working class must use the coercive apparatus of the state to suppress
counter-revolutionary forces and transition society toward socialism, the ghost says. The
theory is sound, but Charlie has already floated away.
Cain
I was never one to dob. Perched bird-high at back of class, twisting hair around a pencil,
watching more than listening. An apprentice in languages spoken without words. It was a
different kind of lesson until you sprayed deodorant across the lab table, said watch this and
set it alight, dominoing elbows, scattering samples, legs, bodies pressed into slides too small
to observe with the naked eye.
It was obvious who’d committed the crime, weapon in hand, smelling divine. But you
snatched the evidence, took the rap, grinning your own brand of fire. I said nothing.
Witnessed a legend in the making. When asked why, blue marbles rolled, smirked. For the
Hell of it. To the victor, the spoils: a kiss from Wendy ‘Chapstick’ Chapman.
In Father Jessop’s class we learnt that Hell is the sun burning through the heart of things. So,
when photons snagged your salted skin, it made me wonder why transgression is nuclear;
why boys haloed in cheap aerosol should look anything less than brothers.
Things Burn
as is the nature of things that burn and to burn is to
fire as in a kiln as in a pot that has been made by hands so lovingly violent and violence
is to fire as fire is to the start of things becoming and unbecoming as we are not
taught of the phoenix until it is too late as to teach is to burn away innocence and replace it
instead with a different kind
of flame that is too hot to handle so seeps into the mind until that is the
nature of things and things that burn are the only things that matter
Zoë Davis is a writer from Sheffield, England. She's a stubborn FND sufferer and fights what her body says she can't do by playing wheelchair rugby league. She writes poetry and prose, and especially enjoys exploring the interaction between the fantastical and the mundane, with a deeply personal edge to her work. You can find her words in publications such as: Ink Sweat & Tears, Strix, Roi Fainéant and Red Ogre Review. You can also follow her on X @MeanerHarker where she's always happy to have a virtual coffee and a chat.
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