Literary Vegan

Black steam trails over the snow moon. February rains on, but with glowing cheeks.  Pale hyacinth, an old Wuthering Heights and brushed cardigans frame the bed. I pull the blanket over from January's side and say,  I've waited .  C. LJ Ireton 

The empty trees were a cacophony  of little lungs, blaring  birds; black, speckled, sparrow. Not for the first time I see February leaves are feathers — barren branches space for bodies round in the empty white 'v's but the sound —  I could sit in that sound over a million city crowds loud thin beaks nestled in my head I am me and I am me they sing — no pushing  just diagonal words,  twigs on twigs. C. LJ Ireton, 2026

The pupil of the sun was a watery, diluted, lemon but it was there and a sudden flock of pigeons lifted something in me; like they had flown collectively  under my lungs. more time like this is coming. C. LJ Ireton, 2026

A sleeping cat, smiling and spiralled into serenity, stillness, wrapped around a tea cup,  warm after waking. fragrance, like hovering fairies vanilla, lavender, melted sugar any sparkle on skin, iridescent anything, actually  diamonds dotted around a platinum ring, pendants that could have belonged to old queens, what the birds say, especially robins, a reading book and thinking of your face. C. LJ Ireton, 2025

The grey part of the dreaming is peering through sheer gap  after sheer gap: jagged ovals between drops of the rain thrum continual on your window, day after day, for a hint of that neon-shaded sun — tangerine letters you recognise  as your own.  C. LJ Ireton, 2025 

In the ever-growing, ever-giving  green pearl butterfly buds  on leaves after the snow, in the rose burst through the night-line; the white-black frost-hold about to be painted bloom-bee yellow, in the hop-sing of the dawn birds — a morning wing wake-up pink melody prayer that filters through the forest,  sifts into sea bubbles, and rustles into a lullaby to be lifted from water wind, is the always-song. Gaze upon the milk-flower in the pebbles grown one, little one. Listen to thin blush drum of each standing petal.  LJ Ireton, 2025