Girls Smell
Sweaty. Hyacinth-sprayed, nylon girls.
Typing. Cats-eyeing you, their manager.
Staring. Each other, full watery
of last night’s bar/ argument.
Boyfriends. They don’t understand.
How to handle them? Surly
at home and at the office. But also, today –
Lying.
About: each other, the work, the slightly senior one.
Summer walls swelter darkly. Girls are –
smeared foundations, eyeliner. Like –
furry animals overheating
on phones. At lunchtime, guarded fiercely. Mums playing on minds.
Hinge/Tinder. Still promising. Opportunity is
staged. Girls.
Smile thinly in life. Pout in contrived reality.
Influencers. Are everything – tanned AND smart. Goals.
Their hustle – light like girls, like fat muscled men with waxed eyebrows.
The Instagram palace, louder than Alexa on Friday afternoon.
Their pony-trick is changing her stations; taking-turns,
kicking. Hands outstretched.
Smell of metal and fragrance.
Tamsin grew up in Rutland and Bahrain. She attended Stamford High School with a local government bursary and has MAs in Acting (Mountview) and Creative Writing (UEA). Between 2015-218, Tamsin developed and toured 3 multimedia plays funded by Arts Council England. She currently lives in London where she works as a Public Relations Director and freelances as journalist for ITV and other outlets. Tamsin is a Guest Lecturer in Creative Writing at The University of Greenwich and is currently writing an auto-fictional novel about her mother’s family.