by daisy hanmer
a note from the artist, daisy
"this is a piece i wrote about a lack of closure i’ve been experiencing with an ex-friend. i love romantic poetry and nature generally, especially nature vs. the unnatural (a theme heavily explored in ‘macbeth,’ hence the reference) so that’s what my writing is inspired by."
summer is ending, and those strawberry sweet hours bleed into the sky, casting hues of pink across the clouds. it’s ethereal, how the swallows skim through, soaring, swooping, unwavering in their formation. how i wish i could superglue everyone in my life in place, a crisp ‘v’ shape that never breaks or strays or flickers. but, summer is fleeting, the swallows are fleeting, and a year ago i could accept that. i was fleeting a year ago. but now there’s a need to bury myself six feet underground, to let the death and decay stack up atop my unmarked grave, as fungi germinate and fester, as the watchful crow recalls every wrong i’ve ever done its kind. it knows. there is no cairn to tell the world this is where i died, a year ago, with no one even noticing, and yet this crow knows. it perches in a great oak, along a trembling limb, twiggy fingers outstretched into a claw, and it knows.
i wish there was an ambiguity about me, an anonymity. i wish something with such beady, glass-like eyes couldn’t see right through me and remind me of every heinous crime i’ve committed. i wish i could just sleep until nature reclaims the earth, until what we’ve built up is a crumbling ruin blooming with wildflowers and bursting with life, but there was a cry that macbeth doth murder sleep. and since that cry, maggots are eaten by the flesh they once feasted on, owls spear hawks on their talons and the fields salt themselves. the scales are unbalanced, and they fall in favour of you.