"The Garden" by Katy Naylor

We choose our words with care. The garden is still and honeysuckle-sweet again, and the evening shade shadows our faces.

We cradle our fledgling trust in our hands. We both know how easy it would be to let it fall into the grass, into the waiting jaws below.

I want to take a paring knife and slice this moment into slivers. Carefully peel away ribbons of fading sunlight, prise out the hard seeds of disappointment that were nestled in the middle all along. Until all that's left is you and I, the twilight and the cool brown earth.

Katy Naylor lives by the sea, in a little town on the south coast of England. She has work published in places including Ellipsis Zine, Emerge Literary Journal and The Bear Creek Gazette. Her poetry chapbook, Girl / Mirror / Wolf (Bullshit Lit 2022) and short fiction microchap (Moonlit Cafe Press, 2022) are out now. Find her on Twitter @voidskrawl.