27th June 2026

 

red heat warning

peeling off sweaty knickers

hot girl

© Rachel Green June 2026

Confession

sixteen

barely an adult; barely a child

half-orphaned already

my widower father won't talk to me

I look too much like my mother.

He works early shift, overtime

comes home at two in the morning

and shouts to turn my light out

electricity doesn't grow on trees.

This is 1978, and solar technology

is still only in science fiction.

I've been transcribing Crowley;

carving a pentagram into the floorboards

while candles drip wax onto a sheep skull

found in the North Wales countryside.

I know there is no god

for what god would take a mother?

but there is certainly a devil;

I'd seen too much evidence;

impossible figures in liminal spaces,

the voice that whispers in the quiet.

© Rachel Green June 2026