I like to lose myself in textures and colours, lines, bumps, and swirls, like emotions and earth and turntables and deliverance. A journey, not in a straight line, not with a map, not even with a labyrinth’s guideposts. Alcohol smoothness and sharpness. Double-tongued clickbait like a promise twisted on tastebuds and glittered under touch. It was meant to be rough, that was the delight. Let the dirt sneak through our fingers like a secret and remember its damp fresh smell of presence and life – life and death. It is unassuming but bolder than red and yellow on a wall background behind the speaker. Turn the speaker off. Remember who you are. Remember. Just remember. Like watching a film on replay over and over and the black earth settles in as the sky cracks open and lets water onto it. Washed clean, washed. Forgotten, turned, analysed, and put in a drawer. This is nonsense, she said, sticking the spade in sopping ground, and it gave with a only a slight squelching groan, a human groan, a textured groan. I am earthened and wet.

*an Impressionist poem written on this day as part of the Verse Virtual June Poetry Event and Workshop.