by Lola Riley
Kindness should be passed on and that’s how you should live your life so I took a long lunch and I haven’t taken my medication since Sunday. I burnt the bridge into town and I still cry when I hear they gut fish alive. Work was fine today thank you and yes I will meet him for coffee. They discovered lobsters have pain receptors and they still boil them alive. I think I’ll eat a calf for dinner and the things I would do to hear my mother say come home. Maybe we could share a cigarette out my old window and talk about past lives and how my head felt in the space between your neck and your shoulder. They gut fish alive and I still remember all your names. The birds have started to make sense and I still hear them call your name. I’m running out of places left to run to and they burn bodies of children on the floor. They burn the bodies of children and small birds who sing are crushed alive and I will never forget pain.
Lola Riley is a researcher specialising in gender politics with an academic background spanning the UK and Japan, graduating with a BA in English and Classical Literature. She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Gender Studies at Utrecht University, where her research examines EU policy on human and sex trafficking. Her work ranges across poetry, short fiction, and academic writing, often centred on trauma, sexual abuse, gender, and the representation of women in art and culture.
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