GABRIELLE MUNSLOW

Adam’s Ale

the old name for water, the first drink, the simplest thirst.

Bougainvillea, thorn-armored bloom,

plankton drifting—algae, crustaceans—

a hidden kingdom in an inland basin,

non-oceanic water breathing its own tides.

I splash my face in the reservoir,

Adam’s ale cooling my skin,

while light bends and scatters—

I am refracted,

a prism made of flesh and ache,

splintering into the many rays of sun.

I sit beneath an arboreal sky,

ceiling woven from foliage and verdure,

cathedral of green where shadows

keep their soft liturgy.

Saudade gnaws the marrow of light,

and my sunlit heart caves inward.

I hunger for your presence,

for the echo of your breath in the leaves.

If the day could linger—

just one more turn of the earth—

I would not ask for forever.

But even plankton drift toward dark,

their glow extinguished in the basin’s hush;

so too my heart, without your light.

The Temporary Arrangement of Stardust Cosplaying as the Cosmos

I am not boring.
Every atom in me has a history far older than the Earth itself.
I am not just alive;
I’m an ancient constellation
briefly taking human form.

I am the flutter of a baby’s eyelash.
The hint of petrichor—
a combination of plant oils and a chemical called geosmin,
produced by bacteria in the soil.
When rain falls on dry earth,
it releases these compounds into the air—
and I am that first breath you take when it happens.

I am Mesopotamia.
I am the 6th to 5th millennium BC.
I am Ancient Egypt,
the Indus Valley Civilization,
and I lived in the Yellow River valley in China
before I existed as me.

I have been carbon in a dinosaur’s rib,
salt in a prehistoric sea,
iron in the blood of a mammoth’s heart.
I have cycled through volcanoes and orchids,
coiled in the DNA of wolves and women.
I am a temporary arrangement of stardust—
and still,
I worry about my weight and parking tickets

I am cosplaying as the cosmos.
My eyes are deep pools of stars,
my body a galaxy in passing.
One day my atoms will scatter again—
but for now,
they have chosen to be me.

Gabrielle Munslow is a UK poet whose work appears in Neon, Origami, Bristol Noir, The Ekphrastic Review, and NHS News, among others. She balances her nursing career with a growing body of lyric and narrative poetry, often exploring memory, myth, and resilience.

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