Shingle Street (When My Best Friend Died) by Natascha Graham

and she doesn’t look like Gillian at all
when I tell her.
Except her face is all screwed up
in that way that she has
when she’s chewing on her thoughts

She pokes a stick between stones into sand
How’d she die? She asks
up-turning the hollowed-out shell
of the body of a crab
Dunno, I say, then, she killed herself

And we sit, for a while
in old black coats
and wellington boots
with the old grey sea
who was never meant for me, or her
but here we are again,
anyway

And when we leave
over ploughed fields
and dust-cracked earth
in the old red Land Rover
that jolts
And the seats that squeak
and bounce
I don’t watch the sea
disappear
out of sight



Raised simultaneously by David Bowie and Virginia Woolf, Natascha Graham writes fiction, non-fiction and poetry, as well as writing for stage and screen. She lives with her wife in a house full of sunshine on the east coast of England. Her play, How She Kills, was performed by The Mercury Theatre in August 2020 and broadcast on BBC radio in September. Natascha's second play, Confessions: The Hours, has been performed by Thornhill Theatre London, and both have been selected by Pinewood Studios and Lift-Off Sessions as part of their First Time Filmmakers Festival 2020. Her poetry, fiction and non-fiction essays have been previously published by Acumen, Litro, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Gay and Lesbian Review, Yahoo News and The Mighty.