By: Jacob Keating

In the emails I’ve sent to publishers, I’ve said it’s about ‘inner-vastness’ and ‘roads left un-walked’ and a twenty-something in search of an always-lost-something.

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I never tire of hyphens; they’re like bridges between words.

I’d like to walk to the centre of a hyphen, lean arms-folded against the cold black maple railing and look down at whatever crosses beneath.  

I’m sure it’d look something like

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Marram grass tufting along the sand dunes of a Cumbrian coastline

Watching the clouds dare each other closer and closer to the oceans hand-drawn border

And the wind’s always cold; sharp at the cheek.

It makes your ears hot.

And this is where Logan and I once fought with the toy lightsabers that date back to when I was his age and it was only me.

And I fell to my knees and tumbled down the tallest slope, getting sand in my hair and my socks and gloves.

I lay there splayed out like I was making an angel

And counted three seagulls on a north-west diagonal

And a stray headed east

And it’s hard to end a poem about nothing.