She's Called Gillian & I Am Winter, by Natascha Graham

Dear Readers,

We're so excited to feature past Rail contributor Natascha Graham with two more stunning poems. 

Natascha's work covers the uncertainty of queer love, lust, and everything in between. You won't want to sleep on this week's post!

We hope you're taking care of yourselves, whatever that may mean to you.

Happy reading!

The Derailleur Press team

SHE’S CALLED GILLIAN

She’s got brown hair and eyes the colour of a bleached winter sky. 
She’s about 5’5, but she’s tough.
I met her just after I met my girlfriend.
My girlfriend was a narcissist.
She didn’t like me having friends, or seeing family.
So, I didn’t really.
Gillian stuck around, though.
In fact, that’s when I first met her
A few months in
She was standing in a driveway nudging gravel with the toe of her Converse.
I asked her if she’d lost something.
Her wedding ring, she said. Not that it mattered.
He was a cheating bastard.
We walked to school together. 
She wore dark jeans and a plaid shirt over a long-sleeved top with four buttons at the neckline.
She was self-destructive.
I liked that about her.
She’d help me put the shopping away when the Tesco delivery arrived. 
It wasn’t my house, 
but I did everything in it.
She expected that of me.
My girlfriend,
The narcissist.
Once when my girlfriend went away, 
we used her land to have a bonfire in the old metal drum that was full of weeds and earth and crap.
Gillian joked we should get all of her clothes and stick them on the fire, 
but burning her clothes wouldn’t do any good, we decided. 
She had enough trouble keeping her clothes on, 
having less of them would only add to the problem.
We cooked our lunch on the bonfire. 
Potatoes baked in tin foil. 
Their skins were black but we ate them anyway, 
and inside they were smoky and white and good.
Gillian would be there in the evenings, too. 
I’d make my excuses and slip to the garage for another bottle of wine, 
and Gillian was there,
back against the wall, picking at the fraying edge of her sleeve.
She’d tell me about her day, the sheep, the farm. 
She’d hug me, properly, hold me until I’d stopped shaking, 
or near enough.

Once, on fireworks night,
She had a party. 
My girlfriend, 
the narcissist.
Everyone was there. All of her friends, family, neighbours.
Her dad made the bonfire bigger than was safe. 
She poured everyone drinks and looked for me to give me something to do.
I stood in the shadows with Gillian. 
She was all nervy, jittery, bristling with energy, possibility, magic....
She was wearing wellington boots. 
Green ones, but they weren’t Hunter boots, and I was glad of that. 
They were bog-standard boots from a garden centre.
She had one hand in her pocket, I could hear the clink of the keys to her Land Rover.
You need to get shot of her.
She said, looking at the bonfire, into the flames. 
Her face was warm, golden, fire-lit and beautiful.
She’s going to kill you if you don’t.
She looked at me then, Gillian did.
One way or another you’ll end up dead.
She was right. I knew she was right.

But Gillian only existed in my head.

I AM WINTER

She is everything I am not. She is supple as a snake.

I am frozen.

She is the whisper of holidays and beach trips, BBQs and laughter.

I am eerie stillness, the last bloom of white from dying blue lips. I am winter. I am cold. I am
in darkness, flirting with madness, wires in my veins, pulsing, vibrating, killing me.

I am the splinters of skeleton trees in the pockets where my eyes used to be, my mind the
fleeting glimpse of a wolf.  She is a peacock, I am a wild hare, running, but never finding
​home in a wood full of eyes. She watches me. Hiding. Breathing.

I am the uncertainty of black ice, I am strong as the North Wind.

Influenced by David Bowie, Virginia Woolf and Sally Wainwright, Natascha Graham is a lesbian writer of stage, screen, fiction, poetry and radio from the UK.
Her novel, Everland has been selected for the Penguin and Random House WriteNow 2021 Editorial Programme, and her short films have been selected by Pinewood Studios & Lift-Off Sessions, Cannes Film Festival, Raindance Film Festival, Camden Fringe Festival and Edinburgh Fringe Festival, while her theatre shows have been performed in London's West End and on Broadway, where she won the award for Best Monologue.
Natascha is also working on The Art of Almost, a lesbian comedy-drama radio series as well as writing a television drama series and the sequel to her novel, Everland.

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