and she doesn’t look like Gillian at all
when I tell her.
Except her face is all screwed up
in that way that she has
when she’s chewing on her thoughts
She pokes a stick between stones into sand
How’d she die? She asks
up-turning the hollowed-out shell
of the body of a crab
Dunno, I say, then, she killed herself
And we sit, for a while
in our old black coats
and wellington boots
with the old grey sea
who was never meant for me, or her
but here we are again,
anyway
And when we leave
over ploughed fields
and dust-cracked earth
in the old red Land Rover
that jolts
the seats that squeak
and bounce
I don’t watch the sea
disappear
out of sight
Influenced by David Bowie, Virginia Woolf, and Sally Wainwright, Elinora Westfall is a lesbian actress and writer of stage, screen, fiction, poetry and radio. Her novel, Everland, was selected for the Penguin and Random House WriteNow Editorial Programme in 2021, and her short films have been selected by Pinewood Studios & Lift-Off Sessions, Cannes Film Festival, Raindance Film Festival, Camden Fringe Festival and Edinburgh Fringe Festival, while her theater and audio shows have been selected by The British Library and performed in London's West End and on Broadway, where she won the award for Best Monologue.
