Apricot Press

I embarked, headphones in ears, backpack slung over one shoulder, phone in my tracksuit
pocket, on my pilgrimage – one final time, half a decade since the last, a decade since the
first and the thousandth time overall, thereabouts.

Over the arcing meadow path that peaks and valleys like mountains, slices by cut down trees
and collapsed benches, barrels down alleys formed of garden fences and bursts through the
field and out onto the main road.

An encore. We had no right to be here and the February day had no right to be so summer-
bright and sticky-sweat hot. The pub had no right to be so rammed and the library no right to
be offline, all systems down.

So we ate burgers, drank lagers and sat on the sofas where I met my first love, the
sunlight streaming through fluttering blinds in shafts and cut segments. Together, we mused
the old beginnings and these brand new, visceral endings.

I was exactly here all those years ago. She was exactly there, exactly where my friend now
sits, muscling her spectre off the sofa. Back then, the sunlight was waning into autumn.
Today it blossoms into bright spring.

Double bed in a rented house.
Memory foam with a mattress topper,
soft and spacious as clouds –
the ceiling my sky, the bulb my sunshine.

This is light years from the last night I spent
atop the collapsing and peaking tectonics,
the rolling hills and plunging valleys,
of my childhood bed.

Yet my form contorts, bends and slithers
to fit inside those valleys,
while I fall flailing through clouds.

My arms slot into curving canyons,
my knees bend over mountain ranges,
my head is propped up by summits.

Joseph Blythe

Joseph Blythe is from the north of England. He has short stories and poems present or forthcoming from Stand, Pennine Platform, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Grist Books, London Grip, Swim Press, Allegro Poetry and more. From 2022-2024, he served as an editor at Grist Books. He is currently working on a novel about the fallibility of memory. He holds an undergraduate degree in English Literature with Creative Writing and a Master’s in Creative Writing. He tweets, Instagrams, and Blueskys @wooperark.

Photo credit: Joe Smith