TJ Wilkshire – Writer's Edit

This piece is part of our ongoing series 'Poem of the Month'. Every month, the Writer's Edit team selects their favourite submission and provides detailed feedback to the author. Stay tuned for an interview with TJ Wilkshire, discussing her inspirations and literary influences. My Head by TJ Wilkshire For Depression I know you are picking your feathers, hurting like hell, warbling a lonely song. Chainsaw screeches waft through gum leaves. The pool is half-full but spring has only just landed, nesting in the corners of bricks and sticking to timber floors. We are magpies together; common, suburban. Our legs are black: yours stained from birth, mine blackened by ink. Brown eyes, blue eyes. We are shy but not together and so our banter sings, carolling like summer storms. You have left though your body still lingers, hollowed with a twig still clenched in your beak. I call for you, from my nest, for fourteen days but your absence makes you deaf like addiction and now I’m hurting like hell, like last year. We dip aggressively in and out of days, swooping comfort. Our monochrome colours making Mondrian marks on our skin.