Recipe for Shamelessness Upon Seeing Friends For the First Time in Over a Year and Being Sick Now (Possibly Forever)

Yank aside my mask to vomit

An oil cocktail of bile spill (allergens in bold): 

Old gin/with Fresh juice; and

rim of vegan sausage roll

/Sparkling popping candy 

burning up /Overgrown sinuses

/Swollen door paths /Splitting wood &

/Biscuit crumb lungs

(Plague-battered and deep-fried) 

(No)hands reach into my unbleached hairs

To Cats(2019)-cradle my troubles between (un)familiar fingers 

But, there! – Half a cup of water/A polo mint 

(balanced gently on the wet grass)

Served: inside of four Cats(recording of the stage musical)

frommy Dead Moon’s Holy Atmosphere 

in a Princess Diana memorial pint glass 

And so (in the mode of an artisan) I:

recompose my spit,

wipe my tears, and fit my masks back on.



Nicks Walker is a queer trans Scottish writer currently locked down on the Southern English coast.  His work appears in The Speculative Book 2021, Qmunicate Magazine and Anti-Heroin Chic and will appear in the upcoming anthologies, Summer Anywhere (Dreich) and A Drunken Midsommar (The Daily Drunk). He has four rats and various disabilities and tweets @nickserobus

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