Olivia Tuck

#moonshaming

@moon is done to death. @moon is sick-white. @moon is too fat for TopShop. @moon wanes to a shoplifted Superdrug razor blade. @moon spends half the month gorging, the other half erasing herself. @moon’s Insta feed is butters – all that waxing. @moon is a slag. @moon swallows. @moon applies gravity-dark lipstick then blurs it on the rim of a balloon glass. @moon gets thirsty when the tide thrusts as she dances. @moon snorts coke and shines like an X-ray. @moon wields a meat cleaver behind her unlit back for the walk home. @moon is bruised – you can see where her fella let her have it for wearing silver. @moon doesn’t speak to her mum now. @moon bleeds when caught in the shadow of the earth. @moon takes note of that TikTok hand signal—palm to camera and tuck thumb, then trap thumb—yet never uses it. @moon wants to tell, but space is devoid of sound. @moon wants to cry, but everyone is looking.

Olivia Tuck's work has been published by the Poetry Society and Broken Sleep, and has appeared in print and online journals including The High Window, Under the Radar, Perverse and Ink Sweat & Tears, as well as Tears in the Fence and Lighthouse where she interns on the editorial teams. She is currently studying at UEA, on the MA Creative Writing – Poetry course. Her pamphlet, Things Only Borderlines Know, is published by Black Rabbit Press.