Literary Vegan

Six days till solstice  drops like marbles string the sycamore tree upside-down mirror beads stud orange leaves decorations to ease the shortest light hung by no-one.  C. LJ Ireton, 2025

Night-shrugging the bags from my shoulders, the worst part walking is the nearly home but not — when I turn the street corner  and stranger, I am stilled by the cascade of electric stars across your garden trees, turning my evening gingerbread and this whole dark December  to dotted lights.  C. LJ Ireton, 2025 

  The sun burns a butter-pearl disc  in the smoke-silk fog, the trees turn gothic in the veil. Cold morning, you are a cathedral marble face  turning upwards to the candles. C. LJ Ireton, 2025

I cannot muster much on the grey, windy days my ambition  sits cold on the pavement,  waiting  to not be sitting on the pavement, the air stings my face, my knuckles. But I see a puddle gap in the stone making a splash bath for the pigeons  three bobbing heads — and the restaurant scraps, some crumbs by the glass, gets them so excited. I cannot muster much mid-journey on a slate street but look at them humbling me with thank-you coos and feather puffs passing, paused on the same ground  as my ungrateful feet. C. LJ Ireton 2025

The afternoon winter sun — a glass ball, melted like rose butter on the surface of the pool. I followed it down with my arms into noiseless relief where the dark sky money season can't reach me — only the memory of every sparkling sea coast as I kick through past lives. Some places are a muscle you can only find repeating the stretch. LJ Ireton, 2025

Neon explosions over an urban mascara sky; I cry for hidden hedgehog spikes.  In the morning,  one lone dandelion stands in the park;  ghost grey full. He is sentinel to fake scatter-stars and those curling. He is the silent, breath-shimmer shape of both.  C. LJ Ireton, 2025