She checks her sleeve covers her scar,
the size of a passport photo, a flap
of skin like a door to the trauma
she pours on the page. Words as red
as the wine that helps keep the nightmares
at bay. She wants to write about
the butterfly’s flash of colour against
a grey sky, a snowflake’s reflections,
how chill embraces a woman making
a snow angel. Not the performative
sludge, dirt-tinged slush, that gets
her published, but only reminds her
she doesn’t really belong. This constant
othering that packs her in a box
when she would love someone to cover
her scar with warm fingers, perhaps raise
her hand for a kiss, a connection. Someone
who sees the whole complicated mess of her.

**

Emma Lee’s publications include The Significance of a Dress (Arachne, 2020) and Ghosts in the Desert (IDP, 2015). She co-edited Over Land, Over Sea, (Five Leaves, 2015), reviews for magazines and blogs at https://emmalee1.wordpress.com

P76 issue 9: Poetries of place/ displacement/ diaspora/ odyssey: On-line Edition. Table of Contents