Ginny Darke: Excerpts from Poison Centre

an unlabelled substance

delivered via

an unwashed cup

or a sequence of unsent drafts

reaction begins two to four minutes after exposure

symptoms include

dissociation from remembered gestures

involuntary repetition of song lyrics you never liked

horror

shortness of breath when near mirrors

                                                                                  _____

did you mean
to ingest            it

you press 1 for yes

but the line clicks
before you can explain nuance

operator says
          keep your distance
          avoid sudden memory loss
          drink water
          call again if symptoms worsen
          or if your mouth forgets how to form the word
mine

                                                                                   _____

in some languages
there is no direction translation
for the noun
               recover
only
               to carry with less pain
probably

                                                                                  _____

You leave a note on my lunchbox

                                                    what doesnt kill you
                                         might still reroute your bloodstream
                                               to places it cant return from                                                                                         

                                                                                  Roy x

                                                                                  _____

i understand it is not        the burn itself
but the penetration

how quickly the alkali seeps
past the cornea

deeper architecture
behind the globe

infiltrates
like texting the wrong person

it liquefies protein            so the eye
melts

in layers

epithelial           stromal           nerve

                                                                                 _____


Mallory later told me there was a moment maybe just four seconds in when she felt nothing
          A tremor to her stillness           the kind animals get
          before earthquakes

Then the pain arrived with such specificity

it was almost administrative

like someone had marked her eyeball with a red pen and said

Here
exactly here
this part
dies now

                                                                                 _____

Roy held her head
I poured and poured
four litres of
sea water into
the wound
like it was the ALS ice bucket challenge trend like      oh god
oh Roy oh god

until
it gurgled jacuzzi like

like a newborn
until my hands shook

from the weight of it
those tiny sounds

                                                                                _____

The label on the bottle
was half dissolved
peeling in wet flakes

like sunburned skin

to reveal embossed pictograms of

flames skulls !!!!!!!!!!!!!!


                                                                                _____


Later      in a and e
the nurse asked Mallory
to rate the pain
on a scale from One to Ten

she said

It feels like the future
The nurse wrote it down

Ginny Darke is a Welsh poet based in Bristol, England. She has been shortlisted for the Poetry Wales Award (2025) and was a Foyle Young Poet. Her poetry has been published with The Stinging Fly, Poetry Northern Ireland, And Other Poems and Basket Magazine amongst others.


[Photo Rianne Zuur]