Kitty Donnelly’s first collection, The Impact of Limited Time, was published in 2020 by Indigo Dreams. She has had poetry published in journals including Acumen, Mslexia, Quadrant and the New Welsh Review. She won a Creative Future Award in 2019 and was commended in the McLellan Poetry Prize. She has recent been published as part of the ‘Write Where We Are Now’ pandemic poetry project for Manchester Writing School.

So I Walk

When I think about what happened
I can’t bear it, can’t bear it so I walk
swiftly, leaving time behind me
where birches tick & flutter, exposing
silver skins, the odd dog walker
striding through the naked trees.

I keep my head low. These are sour
times; I’ve a sour taste on my tongue.
The lip of the canal has given way & grins
from unstirred depths (the locks are closed),
moss-coated stones, & waving weeds.
The playing field’s a pond, an overflow

where geese, seagulls & herons greet
as though in ancient pilgrimage.
A rope of grass around the river’s edge
is the only navigable foot-space. So I walk,
I walk to stitch with steps
the rags of what belonged to us.