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The Lady Ruthless

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Author Archives: theladyruthless

Knucklebone

we’re all looking for someone in our livesgrasping at the wrong shoulder in the darkand holding on with grim-jawed stubbornnessas the one we want observes us and sighsand opens a newspaper for the waitlong and white and as clinically coldas a hospice corridor; its lights blinkand the water in the cooler is stale,and swims withContinue reading “Knucklebone”

Posted bytheladyruthless20th Jan 2021Posted inUncategorizedLeave a comment on Knucklebone

The Beauty In The Bell Jar

I wake with a skull-biting migraine around midday, as always, forever too tired to greet the morning. My mouth is as thick as linen, and I wouldn’t get up at all if the wardrobe weren’t so eager to dress me, which she does, in blue and white, like the habit of a nun I onceContinue reading “The Beauty In The Bell Jar”

Posted bytheladyruthless15th Jan 202115th Jan 2021Posted inUncategorizedLeave a comment on The Beauty In The Bell Jar

His Sonnet

where did I walk before I knew of you?a haggard Earth, black soil, frost-eaten planes?some other nameless planet just as bluea moon with love nor colour in its wanes?what ash did I consume when you weren’t mine?few bites I took sustained that did not cloyfruit was but pulp, and water naught but brineand yet aContinue reading “His Sonnet”

Posted bytheladyruthless13th Jan 2021Posted inUncategorizedLeave a comment on His Sonnet

The Taunt of the Pale Wyrme

The trees by the Great River had already lost most of their leaves by now, but Prince Sybll sat gazing at them from the bank as if they were still as laden as they had been at the beginning of Autumn. To her right stood her three elder brothers, filling skins with water for theirContinue reading “The Taunt of the Pale Wyrme”

Posted bytheladyruthless15th Dec 2020Posted inUncategorizedLeave a comment on The Taunt of the Pale Wyrme

Stiltskin

It was there each day, that monster, each day and every night, an old thing that had felt the pitted hole in me and settled there, like rot in the hollow of a old tree. At once it had fed off my veins, drinking the fat and the liquor until I couldn’t stand upright withoutContinue reading “Stiltskin”

Posted bytheladyruthless5th Dec 2020Posted inUncategorizedLeave a comment on Stiltskin

That Afternoon

it was a bare and barren nobody,that afternoon, wet air and sodden earth the razed umber of a firebird’s huetrod in by wading footfalls, and the sunbored through the trees a red and dripping holelike a gunshot, bruising the sky yellowand the moist clouds, dragging their crumbling tails,drew words and features long-condemned to fadebefore theyContinue reading “That Afternoon”

Posted bytheladyruthless24th Nov 2020Posted inUncategorizedLeave a comment on That Afternoon

Old Clothes

my old clothes don’t fit anymore I try them on again, sometimes, to seeif they flatter me still- there are daysthat they do, jarring as a flowerin the dregs of a nuclear ruin, and days that they don’t- I feel like oil on a blackroad, all thin-film and refraction:this dress I hoard, another given awaymakingContinue reading “Old Clothes”

Posted bytheladyruthless12th Nov 202012th Nov 2020Posted inUncategorizedLeave a comment on Old Clothes

Tubes

their threat was a tubeand a starch white bedas if I was some suffragettein a cell that I had chosen as if I was thin-fingered malicewith a scheme on the skinof my kneeswhen I shrieked in the mouthof the box they clapped shut but a rat can slipthrough a hole like a dimeand a TomContinue reading “Tubes”

Posted bytheladyruthless23rd Oct 2020Posted inUncategorizedLeave a comment on Tubes

Old Kings

Whenever you heard ‘Teepike’ on a Search and Rescue dispatch call you were in for a rough slog; that’s what we told the newbies on their first day, and as warden of my team a good decade into my career that opinion held strong. But nothing any of us saw out there beat the TeiganContinue reading “Old Kings”

Posted bytheladyruthless19th Oct 2020Posted inUncategorizedLeave a comment on Old Kings

Calcify

my curse has always beento romanticise my lifewhen it didn’t deserve it that time we kissed in the rainI was an fleabite on your armthat you scratched when I turned away the Polaroid of us drinkingmulled wine in a cabinI looked at for a swollen momentthen threw out with the rest of it running shoelessContinue reading “Calcify”

Posted bytheladyruthless12th Oct 202019th Jan 2021Posted inUncategorizedLeave a comment on Calcify

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