Keeping the Lights On by Jane Ayres

don’t let in Mr (notquite) Right

there is malev(i)olence in ruptured darkness

bursting through tau(gh)t bruiseblue

fracturing the whispered splintercrack

splitting

her

inside

/out

(she’s never been the same since)

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UK based Jane Ayres completed a Creative Writing MA at the University of Kent in 2019 aged 57. She has work in Confluence, Postscript, Dissonance, The Agonist, Lighthouse, Viscaria, The Sock Drawer, Streetcake, The North, The Poetry Village, Scrittura, Door is a Jar, Marble, Agapanthus, Kissing Dynamite and The Forge.