Hayden Boyce

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12X Bus at Traffic Lights

I’m looking at you looking from the clifftop out to sea.

I’m looking at you looking from the clifftop at the horizon
where the sunken sun has left a soft, pink glow on that far cloudline.

I’m looking at you looking from the clifftop
and learning how I feel by reading into how you feel.

I’m waiting on you looking from the clifftop as I wonder where we go from here.

Doomsday Hand

Friends, there was a time where it was good form
to extend a hand to those who reach back into the mists.

We are not yet washed away, but the taste is in the air.
Petrichor petrified, infused with noxious pangs
for millennia trapped under ice.
Dearest friends, it is only us that we speak between.
A promise of future became hope,
                                     became myth.

There is a hand on the clock
which does not reach back for us.

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Hayden Boyce lives in Brighton and works as a mental health practitioner in the NHS. He has self-published two books of poetry, HOME (2019) and FIRE POEMS & Afterglow (2022). Hayden can be found on X (@boyciieee).