‘I lose you better’ by Millie Woodrow

I lose you better

I would’ve buried you with crab apples
around your hands and feet

so that when the tree in the park flowers,
fruits, and sheds

I might remember your body in the waves
at Chesil Beach, your thighs goosefleshed
and shining.

I would’ve buried a knife at your hip
and thought of you skinning your apples

in one long curl, a green ribbon
wind-whipped from your hair

long lost, forever turning greyer
out at sea.

Millie Woodrow is a writer of poetry and prose based in Salisbury, Wiltshire. She is presently a student on the Creative Writing MSt at the University of Oxford. She has previously been published in Motherlore and Acumen.