Making Pierogi for My Mother

A parcel of time
the dough thinning
to not quite conceal
what it contains.

Onions and potatoes
root my floured fingers
to the earth. We consume
the ground we stand on.

Sylvie Jane Lewis writes fiction and poetry, and recently graduated with an English MPhil from Cambridge. Her work has placed in competitions (winner 2023 CUPPS Prize, runner-up 2023 Sykes Prize) and appeared in various publications. Poetry of hers features in Smashed Peaches (2023), an anthology of women and nonbinary writers on surviving violence.

today there is nothing on my to-do list

if I close my eyes I can
reach into the earth
pull it inside out like a cardigan
wear it as my peacock feathers