Lucy Sheen
Grief
Dark
Deep
An emotional duvet
A patched work
Stitched with frayed time
Worn out thread-bare excuses
Guilt woven in and out of the feeling weft
The centre did not hold
The synapse fractured
Flaying the fabric of sensation
Allowing the deep abyss to perforate the cover
Haemorrhages through
Staining the quilt
Spreading
Creeping
Crawling
Over, in, under and out
Variegating the patches
Tinting the needlework
Until the original colour is lost
Sinking
Pulling
Enveloping
Smothering
Lucy Sheen is an actor whose appearances include the films Ping Pong, Business As Usual and Secrets & Lies. Born in Hong Kong and raised by an adoptive white family in the heartland of conservative England—next to the cucumber sandwiches, church spires and cricket on the village green—Lucy seeks to write and make sense of identity issues that may be unfamiliar to British audiences. Her essays appear in the anthology The Dance is New (Mardibooks, 2013) and Perpetual Child: Dismantling the Stereotype (CreateSpace, 2013).