Becoming Moss by Ella Frears
Becoming Moss
Ella FrearsI lie on the ground.
I open my mouth.
I suck on a spoon.
I embrace a stone.
A beetle crawls by.
I empty my mind
I stuff it with grass
I’m green, I repeat.The sun is a drink.
The yellowest squash
I can’t get enough
I can’t get enough
I can’t get enough
I can’t get enough
I can’t get enough
I can’t get enough
MARGINALIA
1.
Last week I found myself on the kitchen floor, cheek against the cool tiles, just breathing. One of those days when I want to disappear. When the weight of being human feels too much—all this thinking and wanting and hurting.
2.
I want to become something that doesn’t have to choose what to love or how to leave or when to stay.
3.
The repetition of wanting—isn’t that what makes us animal?
4.
I can’t get enough of your laugh when it catches you by surprise. Can’t get enough of the morning coffee steam against my face. Can’t get enough of this terrible, beautiful world that keeps breaking my heart and putting it back together.
5.
What would it be like to live without language. To exist only in sensation—sun on skin, earth under fingernails, the slow patience of growing things. No words to complicate the simple fact of being here.
6.
When I am overwhelmed by all the ways we get it wrong on what it means to be human, I remember: even the smallest things understand the fundamental act of turning toward what feeds them. Even moss. Even me.
KEEP READING
SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in Shine, Darling by Ella Frears, published by Offord Road Books, 2020. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)
DESCRIPTION
“Ella Frears’ debut is a collection of wry, vivid poems whose power lies in their intimacy. They are as insistent as they are circumspect, drawing close to the readers ear and bringing them into confidence. The engine of Shine, Darling is one of strength, of fortitude in confronting and surviving the world, of a lifted-chin audacity There was pain, the speaker allows, but it was not new pain. Frears’ work is world-weathered rather than world-weary, delighted by service stations, f**king on bins in Cornwall, in constant communion with the moon. It lives for the power-play of people, of the pull of the sea, the smoky air Stormy, sticky with flies and tangled underbrush where the land ends. Her characters test each other, experimenting with the boundaries of physical violence, of punishment, of traps, all the while drawing the reader into a complicity that gives these poems all their daring, electrifying muscularity. In Shine, Darling, the desire to expose and disclose wrestles with defence and defiance. The result is exhilarating, a glorious full-bodied debut collection with the draw of an adamant tide.” (Source)
ABOUT ELLA FREARS
Ella Frears is a poet and artist based in London. Her debut collection, Shine, Darling, (Offord Road Books, 2020) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. Goodlord, (Rough Trade Books, 2024) her new hybrid work which takes the form of one long email to an estate agent, is shortlisted for the Forward Prize and the Sky Arts Awards’ Times Breakthrough Artist of the Year. She… (more)
Read more poems by Ella Frears • Find books by this poet on Amazon • Bookshop • Follow on Instagram • Twitter • Bluesky • Threads • Website • Or view my library
ENDNOTES
- Explore other works in pursuit of: nature • self • living • Or browse the index
- If this work resonates with you, please consider supporting the archive. Thank you for reading.
