Free Verse Revolution:

I’m 19 and I’m on Fire (after Lorde) by Gina Bowen

Our hearts, engulfed in burning,

melted skating rinks we called our own. 

Your hands warmed my ice with November sun

and I forgot that my Converse were always dirtied

because I was always living beneath branches,

somewhere on the run. 

And we were spinning. 

How we spun. 

Weeknight Chinese noodles 

satisfied until they ran cold. 

Yellow cab slumber 

and greyhound ticketed travels

lived somewhere within this inhalation

and died within winter’s lioness scorn.

When we loved then

and only then

when we were summer. 

When we were young. 

If I remember anything at all,

I remember your eyes. 

And how we were spinning

and how we spun

sometimes then

and never again

when we were spinning

how we were spinning 

when our names lived on each other’s tongues

when it was then

when we spun 

when we were spinning

when we were young.

---

To read more of Gina Bowen’s work you can follow her on Instagram @gina.bowen.creative.

You can download a free copy of Issue I: hebe (the fountain of youth) here.

Submissions for Issue II are open!