New Poems by Briony Collins : “A Fig in Winter” & “Holocene”

a fig in winter

a fig in winter

the night after you shatter me
you send me videos about stoicism

like that means a goddamn thing
but you want to help

i’m afraid to move
if i get up i might disturb the memories

might shake up the dust and find it settles
into shapes i no longer recognise

might dislodge the texture of the walls
where you pressed me, where i died

might lose the temperature from the pillows
the sweat of the duvet twisted into knots

by your hand, i am freezing
and you send me the words of dead men

fuck you

they tell me to thaw and surrender
but i am your winter

holocene

holocene

all his exes are crazy
not him

upon waking i stretch
crack the base of my spine
my fluids run thin, deplete
their vitality between bones

he sleeps with his nose
squashed into a pillow
what an ugly thing, i think
to be so sure of sanity

the sun doesn’t visit us here
in this flat, gone noon
the austere, saxe filter
of the day already dying

we are a moment
a lungful of our lives

upon waking i stretch
my mind over the length
of my limits, i’m an ugly thing
for losing myself in another

arise, mad sisters
we are the last

photo by Haojie Xu

Bio: ‘Briony Collins is a poet, novelist, and playwright. She won the 2016 Exeter Novel Prize and has several prominent publications. Her debut poetry pamphlet, Blame It On Me, is forthcoming with Broken Sleep Books in August 2021. She is co-founding editor of Cape Magazine.’