Article written by Holly Ma
Illustration by Ana Isaacs
This piece was originally published in ‘Memento Mori’, Bossy’s 2021 print edition.
February wafts in the air:
fresh linen, mangoes, and grilled cheese,
punctuating conversations
between cicada and kookaburra,
jokers of suburban summer.
A poolside breeze seeps
along weedy pavement cracks,
ones the sun tore
with his morning yawn and exclaim.
Satiated laze has chained us all
at home, digesting stifled heat
that pushes hunched shoulders along
dust-bitten streets.
We squint over exhausted posters
clinging to travel stalls, holiday boutiques,
tropicana anchoring us
way out past the bleached seas,
but the horizon is still too far
to see,
like the image plastered to the upper corner,
plastered into my mind
and if I prise your eyes
you’ll see:
two girls, giggling in the slurry
outside a pancake parlour in Glasgow,
bundled together and struck with maple syrup glow-
mellow,
unlike the blue-tongued lizard
blistering in the sun.
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