Jigsaw

It starts in utero, painted wood carvings thick as a 
finger, gift 
wrapped in nostalgia. Colour weaves in time, a voice 
with a 
thousand faces. Some velcro themselves, urchins of 
experience. 
Some are stolen. Onlookers swapping their gray clouds
for your 
sequinned linings. Habit seeks connection, the way 
red cars 
appear everywhere. Paper craft punches squeezed 
into a rat 
shaped hole. Then, one day, you sit in a room, blood 
staining 
the clinical white, listening to a doctor tell you, again, 
there is 
no heartbeat. And after the third -- because starts, middles 
and ends 
must always come in threes -- a tidal flow washes away 
the picture 
along with the list of names collected in notebooks and 
stayed chimes 
ring from my 

                                    pores like sopranos

Monochrome

what could have beens flash   a flick book   pebbles on the 
        path   A poppy in a field where a child ran to her
father 
            muddy handprints across a clean dress
with a taffeta 

underskirt  while passersby coo through  blinkered  vision   
through 
          another’s before     where they laughed 
and i didn’t watch the
                  body for danger. Waiting for the laughter 
to burn the fuse 

to a dirty bomb, balancing a tightrope of predictions    
waiting  for 
          the face to contort -- a gargoyle     transforming 
protector to predator
                     A statue at the city gates. A scorpion, 
surrounded, stinging 

itself rather than surrender to defeat. He would have had 
         a before too. 
         A before I discovered in a photograph. My eyes in 
monochrome 
            with a 50s hair do buried deep at the back of a 
draw with her death 

and a million words waiting with all the anticipation of a 
new bride
        for the one to be born who can feel them but weeds 
left growing 
           in the shadows eventually suffocate the toughest 
crops. The 

drugs weren't just escapism. They were a chance to sing a 
different 
      song. To be the crop in the field bursting with light, 
able to breathe
        Like the little girl running in the park wiping her 
muddy hands across  

the front of her clean dress with the taffeta under skirts, 
still believing in the word home

Until the Rain

By day 3 i knew where his eyes looked at all times
      and each wave     cradled         an orchestra 
         colliding     symphonies          Seeking    

 like  flesh behind     a burqa    or    a clean   white
        wedding dress     seeks        to trace     the
           sunlight   defining    separation   of will from  

   strength   from neck  to  chest      beating    and     
          bared     an    expedition     from touch   to    
            taste   A reflex   like thirst  like  possession 

      was an option    and   I    was not a thief
         and the sunlight was not a liar   selling tales 
           
             of    pheromones   and  oxytocin ends       
                On a sail    without    
destination  

        or    consequence      Until the rain    swept
salt   
    
from my lip    erased    summer   from   my  hair

Mary McQueen is a London-born Anglo-Egyptian writer. In 2023, she released a spoken-word album Mightier than the Sword. In 2024, she was accepted into the Out-Spoken Academy and began refocusing on written poetry. McQueen has founded the poetry platforms Poetics and Flip the Script. Mary also works as a therapist, facilitates therapeutic writing workshops, and hosts a radio show providing a platform for established and rising talent. Find her via @kilhapoetry

Jigsaw first appeared in Ink Sweat & Tears.