1,425 women by Yanita Georgieva

rescue soft fruit from the pavement

make it sing, turn earth to marmalade

dream a hundred teeth roll down the road

catch a new light in the window, chase the smoke

watch the moon wreak havoc in the fields

practice dying in the bushes, on the roads,

make them news & agonise over the lines

allegedly, these women, sources say, they lost

their lives, these women, what they did

at night, the shadow of a sun, a motorway

the car door opens and a man, always

a man and 1,425 women

their voices echo

down the alleys

we avoid

Yanita Georgieva (she/her) is a Bulgarian journalist raised in Beirut, Lebanon. She is an MA candidate in Poetry at Royal Holloway University and lives in London with her cat, Eugene. You can find her work in Hobart, Alien, HAD, and elsewhere - and you can follow her on @georgievayani.