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The Maker The Charles Causley Literary Blog

Home Blog ‘Exposure’ by Abigail Ottley

‘Exposure’ by Abigail Ottley

October 19, 2022
Abigail Ottley lives in Penzance. Over the past decade, her work has appeared in more than two hundred outlets, most recently in Poetry Wivenhoe, The High Window, the Trigger Warning anthology and The Survivor Zine and Ink, Sweat & Tears. She is a contributor to Morvoren: the poetry of sea swimming published in June, 2022 and Cornwall, Secret and Hidden: a collection of short stories (2022). 

 

(somewhere near Kendal, the mid-1960’s)

 

 

Mud-lagged and shoeless, I am cold, afraid,

three-quarters blind, half asleep.

 

I cannot run. You have thrown away

my glasses. Rain blinds me, too.

 

Your long legs carry you further, faster and

you drag me like a carcass in your wake

 

In your head you are both hunter and hunted,

Geronimo, heading for the hills.

 

A man full-grown, but I see through you. One of

us is not a proper grown-up

 

Here is a window, lit yellow in the gloom.

Rain-sleet slices me raw.

 

I think I might die here,

never go home.

 

                                         Please stop now,

                                                     I sob into the wind.

 

Hours have passed since the blade

of your hunting knife

 

hacked away

at my hair.

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