By Lou Dee
I practise self-hypnosis
By gazing into the screen’s blue light,
The cursor blinking in and out of view
Until dawn floods the room
Like a rising tide and I’m drifting
As the unmade bed is drenched in light.
In sleep, I fall away from the world.
I visit in some other place,
Trace the outline of your face –
The neatness of your hands, your crewneck shirt
The jugular pumping mechanically
As the fading calls of machinery
Reach across the city
In its violet afterglow.
We float above the city like ghosts
And, as the sun breaks the horizon,
Like a bead of sweat surfacing
I tell you this is what it’s like to lose
Something that never was.
Lou Dee is a chronically ill writer. She was a runner-up in the 2015 Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition and was specially commended in the Welsh Poetry Competition in 2012 and 2014. Her pamphlet was shortlisted in the Dreich’s Classics Chapbook Competition in 2023. Her poetry has been published in Ink, Sweat & Tears, Mslexia, All Existing Literary, Eunoia Review and Dreich Magazine.
losing our grip on purpose 