The next generation won’t remember
all of this was ours – for a little while.
The sun’s red strip on the skin of the sea,
lighthouse wedged like a toothpick into waves

​

netted with gulls drifting dreamily to
nowhere. Dogs, flying like kites, tore across
ragged beaches where our bonfires trembled
in drizzling rain and the tide erased

​

our footprints, blew them out like candles, in
the lilac breath of dawn – like we dreamt it.

But we danced on the same rickety pier
and our blunts sparked stars into thick darkness

beneath the same castle walls, wind-whipped and
crumbling like sand into the Irish Sea.

Carefree, dangling our legs over the lip
of Constitution Hill, devoid of fear

in the face of the void. We existed,
’til we didn’t. Our graduation caps

swept by hungry currents, bobbing like buoys
amid soft spoondrift with our driftwood bones.

Mary Senier (she/her) is a writer from the Black Country who currently resides in rainy Wales. Her work often centres around ideas of place and identity. You can usually find her excitedly pointing at pigeons or drinking pots of tea.