Bex Hainsworth

Fimbulwinter

Mid-November, the earth
          prickles with ice.

Commuting towards dawn,
          I doomscroll

in the half-dark.
          Our phone screens

are flares, squibbing.
          Leaves clot and ooze

on the pavements, creep
          under tires. At my desk

I mark student
          essays on human rights

and refresh news tabs
          as the last votes are counted.

From the window,
          I see colour seeping,

each puddle is an inkwell.
          The sky is absent.

I travel home
          without a moon,

foxes shriek by the bins,
          everything is a harbinger.

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Bex Hainsworth is a poet and teacher based in Leicester, UK. She won the Collection HQ Prize as part of the East Riding Festival of Words and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Wales, The McNeese Review, Sonora Review, Nimrod and The Rialto. Walrussey, her debut pamphlet of ecopoetry, is published by The Black Cat Poetry Press.