poetry month: lil eerie

[hopelesse]

Undark by John Glenday, 1995

And so they come back, those girls who painted
the watch dials luminous and died.

They come back and their hands glow and their lips
and hair and their footprints gleam in the past like alien snow.

It was as if what shone in them once had broken free
and burned through the cotton of their lives.

And I want to know this: how they came to believe
that something so beautiful could ever have turned out right,

but though they open their mouths to answer me,
all I can hear is light.

Fire, help me to forget.
-H

Comments

[notasupervillain]

how they came to believe
that something so beautiful could ever have turned out right

Fuck that's a powerful line.

[ceruleancorvid]

Belated response, but — oh wow.

I’ve been obsessed with that story since I read [i]The Poisoner’s Handbook[/i] as a kid. And this is such a beautiful and frightening riff on it.

Poetry!

[hopelesse]

Awww, I'm glad you like the poem! It's really hard, in my experience, to hit a solid genre element in a poem but this one just nails it.