Christine Knight
She smelled of grass
and blonde hair, and something fleshy that came from her pores and made her irresistible to the men we knew, and to me. She slathered me in mud in her bathroom, sat with me naked, shared my bed, loved me, held me, breathed my breath while I breathed her scent of grass and freckles and flesh, that would expand and spread in the years to come, arms and belly and hips. The creases in her neck would multiply, down the suntanned skin of her chest, from collarbone to sagging breasts, and still I would love her, when she smelled of smoke, when she swallowed pills, when she cried in my arms, when she stayed with men who mistreated her, hated her, raped her. I loved her when she left, when I was bereft. I see her now, dancing, whirling her white-blond children, laughing in the sun-warmed meadow.
Dr Christine Knight is an Australian writer based in the Derbyshire Peak District, UK. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing with Distinction from Manchester Metropolitan University (2020). Her poetry has been published in Magma, The North, Tears in the Fence, and elsewhere. Outside poetry, she works freelance in research consultancy and editing, following an academic career at the University of Edinburgh. www.christineknight.co.uk