Part (i)
Machine will always conquer mankind but it will never want to.
The clockwork cannot change direction,
for it too will giggle with the other girls in the playground.
I am the tree at the end of my mother’s garden.
You are mist and burden. I am moss, I am guilt, I am lace.

Part (ii)
I am an android that wishes it could understand
why the child sits alone on the bench at school
despite his possession of the answers (ask him ask him)
He says: my core is made of iron | and vanilla extract and raspberries| I am a rotten corpse weighed down with stones| and I do not sink gently.

Part (iii)
Is god in the screen?
The grandfather clock unpeels my orange and eats it in front of me and wraps his
sticky fingers around my neck. He dutifully explains
why my father reminds me of myself so often and why that’s okay.
I feel time shuffle through me awkwardly
Excuse me young lady, I’ve missed you dearly.
I bathe in the knowledge that I will soon return to dust.

The monsters aren’t in the wardrobe, they’re under your fingernails
and in tenses | cycles | narratives | rhythms |
I know and love monsters, and that’s what makes them real.

Part (iv)
Heidi wonders if her mother is who she always wished to be.
While Eve flirts with a cosmos on the brink of collapse.
Both have existential realisations on the Piccadilly line:
I am every connection and you have sickly sweet power over no one they discover in unison.

Part (v)
yes, everything is water
the devil wants his pocket watch back | you are patient and I am worthy of death and I know her soft presence in language and garden benches | I hate my consciousness I am my eyes and my chair and my bloody paper arteries I am tearing them with my bare breathing hands

—Published 22nd of August 2024

About Georgina Orford

Georgina Orford is currently studying towards a degree in Philosophy and Literature at the University of Warwick. Her interests lie in the intersection between narrative, existentialism, religion, and art. She is also a bass guitarist, and an editor for the literary journal Warwick Uncanny.