Makeshift pathways are always contradicting by Lucy Rumble (United Kingdom, 22)

The ceiling fan spun a cord of leaden weight in perfect orbit round her room.
It hit and chipped the mounted crucifix with a rhythmic tap tap       tap,
drawing                       circles round
            the plans                                  she’d made
            on Sundays                              for plumming

                                       string.

Beneath closed eyes she drifted through the whooshing scape and wandered back
to that midnight wood, where hollowed trees she’d marked in crossing pen            X
and stumbled past at nearing dawn through nettled weeds to homestead.

​
​Further still she found that can of fizz she’d left consumed in sloping lines of chalk,
outlining its

                        tarmacked shadows

                                                                in the lowering sun, pointing toward a landfill.
Their directions blotched on her red-handled arms,

                                                                                                                                     torn
                                                                                                                         through
                                                                                                                         by communion.

But each led back to the acrobats that crafted polygons in the air and in her
head, buzzing stuck in taped crossings through of boxes she hadn’t yet unpacked.
Skewing her inner sanctity.                            X                                  †





Lucy Rumble is a 22-year-old writer from Essex. She holds a BA in Ancient, Medieval and Modern History from Durham University and has recently completed an MA at UCL. She also works as a digital archivist and is passionate about all things literary and early modern. Read her work in Spillwords Press, Aurum Journal and upcoming in Breathe Bold Journal, or find her on Twitter @lucyrumble12.