we are like the moon by Louise Longson

we are like the moon 

                   shrinking

  it is only natural

 after a hot birth

    the violence 

      of impact

  as planets 

    coalesce

     collide 

    bound 

 together

    bound 

     to get

     cooler

       brittle

      to break

      into fault-

      lines that are

     at first nothing

    more than wrinkles

                            in time

                                   but turn

                              into stair-steep

                                           cliffs and

                                                                 chasms

                                                                                    leaving scars

                                                                                                              visible     in       the void

Louise Longson is widely published in print/online. She is the author of chapbooks Hanging Fire and Songs from the Witch Bottle. In 2023, she won the Kari-Ann Flickinger Memorial Prize with her soon-to-be-published collection These are her thoughts as she falls and was also Pushcart Prize nominated. She works for a charity offering support services to people whose physical and emotional distress is caused by loneliness and social isolation, often rooted in historic trauma. Her poetry brings together her personal and professional experiences, translated through the twin prisms of myth and nature.