Heartbreaker
We are all just works in progress,
muscles aching and eczema breaking skin
Our minds playing tricks on us from
Our last relationships. I confided this
in the pub and you called me a heartbreaker, helping
me eat yellow cheese off cold chips. You ordered
a pint of cider and more chips without cheese. Add salt,
add sugar in the form of concentrated tomatoes. Subtract
the tension, we can’t cut it with a plastic knife. Has
it always been about sex for you? I think it’s always
been an equation. When I strolled home that evening,
I wondered what it would take to break a guy like you.
I sent a carrier pigeon to the skies to ask the moon if
you’d already been broken, if she was still around
and as I licked vinegar off fingers, cracked open with broken
skin, I wondered what it would take to fix you.
Ella Sadie Guthrie is a poet who likes to write about love and the sea. Alongside fellow poet Ruth Boon, she co-founded WRIOT, a poetry collective for womxn and non-binary poets but mostly she spends her time walking along Brighton seafront and fantasising about fame. @wriotpoets