The First Verse Set Her in Motion by Kate Garrett

She was caught by a hook in the dark 
of nightclub corridors: arms in lace
gloves, the sticky lager ledges where 
she’d rest elbows and listen as they all 
watched and mirrored poses. 

Eight years on she walks Wednesday 
nights through a demoted mining 
town, ear buds reducing the world
to this song, the sky, a clear plan forms
to get on with her life. She’s restless

under buckets of coal and locked 
back doors with thrown-away keys,
the books she never wanted to read. 
Time moves on from angry boys 
setting fire to the bottom of gardens,

enraging the faeries, digging graves
for their youth. Each of these is part 
of her – the beer stains, the coalhouse
door – but missing pieces call from new
streets, waiting to be rearranged.

About the Author

Kate Garrett’s writing is widely published – most recently or forthcoming in Dreich, Frost Zone Zine, Riggwelter, and The Spectre Review. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, and her latest pamphlet, A View from the Phantasmagoria, was published in September 2020. Born and raised in rural southern Ohio, Kate moved to the UK in 1999, where she still lives on the Welsh border with her husband, five children, and a sleepy cat. Visit her website www.kategarrettwrites.co.uk or Instagram @thefolklorefaery.