ᵗʰᵉ ᶠⁱᵉᴸᵈ ⁱⁿˢⁱᵈᵉ ᵗʰᵉ ʰᵒᵘˢᵉ
You sleep through the hot day, and wake with flies on your face like a polka dot skirt you sit up the skirt billowing up to your cheeks stand and brush the dust from the mahogany door punch your way through it when your laugh comes it’s like a horse standing in a meadow the carpeted blue floors you walk through are stained with wine and compressed from murderous vacuuming until you reach your field in the middle of the house
an unbothered light bulb 30 centimetres from your head turns dandelions to disco balls and black hollyhocks to shooting stars the meadow has a steely gaze, clenches like a fist all flints and flowering fury hooves clatter and the horse takes off you are the horse and the horse is in the field, the wind whispering through its mane corrupting you telling you smog is not that romantic
by now you’ve galloped enough that you’re able to pick up the house containing the field and you carry it over indecently prudish heads on their commute the trains can’t drown out your maniacal neigh and you wipe your nose on the haunted house smear its ghosts on your eyelids the post-promotion office workers stare payslips burning holes in pinstriped suits spf 50 perfuming the caustic air
the door lies on the roof, shattered like the economy a crimson, beating heart rises far above the red balloons beside it working furiously to look alive. pop pop every day they deflate all the cards a man received today on his 60th birthday make generated jokes about his drinking he will stop after tonight he has to tonight he’s throwing a party
the field in the middle of the house has grown heavy so you put it down in a free parking space and fall head over heels back inside the metallic neigh matches the hard nails fixing the field’s demeanour you stick a pen of grass between your purple, fragrant lips and listen to the roar of traffic wish everyone happy birthday happy years gone past happy gone past
Liz Yarwood writes speculative fiction and poetry. Currently working on a science-fantasy novel, their writing has been published by Lunar Sea Literary, Querencia Press and Gilded Dirt.
Their artwork, Sewage Angel, was exhibited at Hypha Studios in London in December 2025. She co-ran a creative writing workshop series, Stone to Silver, in Berlin for two years, and currently writes a weekly blog called The Lunarverse. She created an illustrated sci-fi magazine called Liquid Skies and made a trilogy of zines focused on hyperreal spaces.