Summer afternoon by the lake
poetry by Natalie Crick
CONTENT WARNING:
suicide. Please read at your own risk.
Summer afternoon by the lake
A girl has discarded her dress
and arranged herself upon a tree limb overhanging the water.
I see him coming: the watcher.
A man who is mostly other people.
A man who moved her.
He used to hide under the stairs and snatch ankles.
He smashed every lightbulb in his house. The shards fell like glitter.
You followed him to the shed. There was dog shit inside.
He takes off his coat and swims towards the girl.
I remember seven years ago, my last glimpse of my daughter alive.
He is offering his mouth to the girl. She won’t take it.
And before I know it, I am sobbing under the weight of the sky.
Natalie Crick
Natalie Crick (Newcastle, UK) has poems published in The Moth, Banshee, Bare Fiction, Strix, The Manchester Review, New Welsh Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and elsewhere. She is studying for an MA in Writing Poetry at Newcastle University and will commence an MPhil in Creative Writing at Newcastle University in 2019. Her poetry has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize twice, shortlisted for The Anthony Cronin International Poetry Award 2018, commended in the 2019 Hippocrates Open Awards for Poetry and Medicine and runner-up in the PBS & Mslexia Women's Poetry Competition 2018, judged by Carol Ann Duffy.