It’s a strange feeling, this, to be left alone in the middle of a crowd, to be abandoned by people that I’ve never met. The sun disappears and so do the strangers, and I sit cross-legged on the harsh concrete edge, lockside for the thousandth time, with my purple lipstick and my white wine eyes, wearing a garnet ring that was prised off the finger of a dead woman, with not even my faithful moon for company, and if I told you that I feel alive, it would be a lie, one greater than the lie I told you last night, the one that you will cling onto for the rest of your life, the one about loving you, the one about trusting you, the one in which I promised that I wouldn’t die too soon.
HLR (she/her) writes poetry and short prose about living with chronic mental illness, trauma, and grief. Her work has been widely published, most recently by Misery Tourism. She is the author of History of Present Complaint (Close to the Bone, 2021). She lives in north London. Twitter: @HLRwriter / IG: hel.rol