THE SHINE JOURNAL

WEIGHING INK

by

Christian Ward

She gave him up. He didn't want her anymore. The phone was quiet - Christmas and the snow she started seeing became thicker each day. She had to give him up. Even her smallest of pleasures - appearing in a full length mirror, nude - couldn't uplift the ballast of her insides, slowly turning molten. She had to give him up. She had to give him nothing to remind him of their love. He gave her their broken down Subaru, gone silent with its battery run down. She had to give him up. She sat down in the kitchen and wrote him a letter on the lightest airmail paper she could find, walking to the postbox like a prisoner when it was done, the weight of its ink feeling disgraceful in her hand.

CHRISTIAN WARD is a 27 year old London based poet whose poetry has appeared recently in Why Vandalism? and The Fairfield Review. He has work forthcoming in the Cider Press Review, Taj Mahal Review, The Recusant and The New Writer.

MOTIVATION:

"I wrote this piece based on a failed relationship I once had. It ended quite badly and all communication was reduced to words that were only written down. We never rang each other that time and the letters seemed to absorb our feelings in their ink."