Writing Backwards by Lucy Smith

We leave messages on the mirror in the bedroom, knowing to breathe hard on the glass to make the words appear when the other’s gone. It’s not quite our handwriting; things change when fingers meet a slippery surface. Without the pressure and safety of gravity, what we once knew about ourselves tends to slide.

You say you hope my headache has gone this morning. I tell you to have a great day at work. You say you’ll cook me something nice later. I tell you I’ll massage your shoulders. The tails of your y’s and g’s grow longer when you’re in a rush. The days you leave early, I wake up and piece your morning together.

I don’t know why we can’t ever wake at the same time, as if our inner clocks never tick in sync. I want to match your rhythm but you’re too fast. I write that on your forehead in pink highlighter before I head to work this morning, tsaf oot, above your eyebrows. When I’m leaning on the counter at work, leafing through rotas, I imagine you reading your forehead in the mirror, the handwriting that looks nothing like mine, feeling for the first time that you don’t know me at all.

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LUCY SMITH — Lucy is a writer and teacher from Lancashire, UK, currently based in Cardiff where she has completed an MA in Creative Writing and two artist residencies. Her flash fiction and prose poems have appeared in magazines such as Reflex Press, Ink Sweat & Tears, streetcake magazine, Cease, Cows and more. Lucy also runs creative community projects and workshops, creates podcasts and collaborates with other artists. Instagram/Twitter: @lucysmithwriter. Website: lucysmithwriter.com

Art by LIANA ASHENDEN — Liana is a writer and artist living in the ancient volcanoes of Te Pātaka-o-Rākaihautū/Banks Peninsula, Aotearoa/New Zealand. With a PhD in English Literature and a BSC in Physiology, her writing blends the esoteric and domestic. As an expressionist artist, Liana works in watercolour, acrylic, charcoal and clay. You can find her in Flash Frontier and on Instagram @swampmoa.