Extracts – Ben Whittall

surface tension

you were embryonic, as if prior to life you never reached the womb. translucence felt like crying to the moon as you cupped waxen ambition into a palm's upheaval, waned a glossy breath before the unfolding. the millisecond sorrow pooled to your figure, praying to know your shape before the strike-down, the bubbly ascendance like prayers soft-spoken into a pillow. in a moment,

you will burst through this lucent skin as it crawls, the layers will back-crawl to your heartbeat into a final, crying breath to be grasped tightly. the blow will soften to a motion, rest upon your cheek, the surface tension will clasp you, entirely.

Olympic swimmer Tyler Clary, captured by Adam Pretty at the FINA World Championships, July 29, 2011.

Is this the last time?

All at one, her voice, her eyes,2 Her hopeful refrain Meets my turning denial. Just say it. Aloud. Her name-

fingers intertwine with one's own hand unspoken sepia sky, plucked1 resting upon corners bare, his quiet promise, never shared.

Her hands, poised to love, Sepia drains from her touch.

From quiet corners,

From shame I tell and sinking trust: 'I do not know how to love'.4

turned melancholy. tears fall, his drowning body3 my secrets submerge,

i watch him, unspoken, an unread letter dissolving -

Ron Hicks' 'Just Say It' - what was exchanged.

1 i pluck the hairs from his uniform, to know him before he wakes.

2 her voice, honey-dripped to its own viscosity. i melt in envy.

3 his drowning body unlike mine, a compliment, a freshwater spring turned waterfall, river, sea. the teardrop from a man's cheek.

4 i become the wake. we converge, our rivers meet. our love, endlessly allowing ourselves to flow from sepia sky to sea -

he speaks aloud. he loves me.

Fingers intertwine between two hands, outspoken. Secrets now unplucked. Resting upon corners bare, undrowned, he comes up for air.

he becomes flower �

after being held for so long, an acceptance bloomed like mycelium and i inhaled its sporadic love

as the shower wetted our skins, as he forgave my self-pollination, as we became something else -

we are the delicate ones we are the delicate ones we are the boys of blessing and mettle

as our nails turned into soft pink petals, your delicate eyes shared a pretty glare before our cherry-lips locked into heaven,

as my anther became our ethereality, an immaterially rinsed emotion, our own tender passions as i opened my heart to photosynthesise, we became

flowers. we became flowers. we became the spill of the shower, your body became

a garden i could soak within for hours, a douse in the swell of a sticky date, your light eyelashes of oxeye, i imagined

our capillaries bursting into the cerulean climbs, a rainbow blossoming from your touch like an arch over the morning rays, you say -

we are the delicate ones we are the delicate ones we are the boys of blessing and mettle

as we became bare-threaded angels towered high above this eternal room, he becomes flower, i conclude.

The Insomnia

Pasithea, 33

a goddess weaves the fountain of slumber but never drowns herself within it.

she riles at her clear coherence, the viscosity of requiema honey-filled capsule of pride swallowed with distain, yet with honour, she has forgotten.

a monocular mind the millionth spoken-aloud sentence a liquid-essence of skin glossed over star-lit skies, a north-star's clutch

her prismatic pearls of iridescence she claims acceptanceoh tiger tiger has burnt the twilight owl's tender solace unfrightening, she claims it brightly - oh mellow splendour has overspilled my consciousness, my hallucinatory nectar

she is restless. overtired. exhausted.

a sun-lit tiger prances up the next morning. she decides,

I shall weave my fountain of slumber and drown wonderfully tomorrow night.

Pasithea, 33 by Lewis-John Hackett (MA Photography 2022-23).

manifesto to those who won't listen.

attention please! i alert through the waters like a saturation of hope, like lifeboats. the pints have become their guiding hand, this is my urgent demand. attention please, this is my truth, so i speak:

to all drowned bodies or lovers those who see fit, to those who are stranded from your blood-lineated pillars, from your familiars, i repeat, you are stranded. you are not worthy of these treacherous conditions, you were conditioned into salt-licked tears.

attention please, i call through the shaking tide to their strung-blown altercations, for all whose bodies have rebelled against themselves like a machine no longer human, you are loved in any flesh, fit or splendour, you are loved so please turn back, return home.

attention, please, i cry out and beg to the unconscious lads who dream of dragging their gym-tastic forms up to shore, the soak pouring over them like lactic acids, the swell drawing over blokes like a drink-down's foamy head, my tears falling for those who never said -

attention. please. i scream aloud now in mourning. i viewed my body as couture for fourteen years before i loved myself so you are special, before you stretch your skin to the seams you are special, before you weave your flesh as a prison i beg you recognise that you are ocean, and you are endless.

from the rocks, i see my father. he is clinging on for dear life. this body will be his last. dad please as i watch the waves take him, if you hear my message i have probably drowned too but my love for the past, present and future of you is eternal / forever / endless / attention / attention

please. i wake up to the shore. i am soaked to the touch, it feels like hope, like lifeboats. sand has drawn the prayers uplifted from my tongue and dried the salt-licked tears from my scars. is this my truth? i have awoken, at last.