Alex Mepham

Red Flags

--for Lindsay; after Sophie Collins

He beckoned me onto the golf course.
It was dark. I could not tell
the textural difference between
grass and sand.
We went for a walk.

I had only a bottle of hot lemon
and he had only a knife.
He droned on about things I tried to follow—
his disinterest in letters, but not for numbers—
while to myself I recited lists, making connections:
*train *water *moon *weather
I could not see the knife.

We walked along the water.
A flock of birds startled the surface.
I avoided looking
*at the birds *at the knife
staring only at the ground
while old warnings fogged my eyes.

He said he was the moon keeper
and I said I believed him
though I knew there was no moon.
He had not touched me.

I thought of dogs and wished for dogs
to appear as a distraction—
words mean nothing when you’re counting threats.
Then I would melt *into the night *into the woodland
away from the man and his knife.

But we walked, together
we walked back.

Alex Mepham (they/them) is a PhD student investigating how background noise impacts speech understanding. Alex has work appearing in Magma, Dreich, Berlin Lit, Consequence, and Modern Poetry in Translation among others. Alex is also a Poetry Reader for Kitchen Table Quarterly and is currently working on a narrative chapbook. Alex lives in York, UK, and can be found at amepham.carrd.co.