It’s another topic I’ve come to hate
Another argument I need to debate
I can’t fight the waves despite the restraint
It’s hard to find the strength to replace

I move through the seasons with a thorn in my chest
I move through the aisles with the ash where I tread
You will never see the cards I carry in my hand
But you should know, I’ll always 50 steps ahead

They look right through me like a sheet of Perspex
They look right through me, and they’ll already forget
I never felt a condition so complex
How am I the ghost, where they’re the living dead?

I inscribe it here, my cenotaph to the rats
Who crawl up my spine, and dig into my back
And wander through the maze of everything I lack
To come out my mouth, and end right back to black

Free admission to the crypt inside my soul
There is never a line to the ride inside my skull
She runs a trip from the brain to my toes
And you’ll always leave the park with a heart full of stone

Why is there a dead girl on avenue?
Why there an ash cloud that always wrecks the view?
How come every time they try, they can never get through?
They were gone before they even said hello to

you.

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Grace La Pace, born 1999, was raised in south-west Sydney, Australia. She graduated from the University of Sydney in 2022 with a degree in speech-language pathology, and currently works as a speech-language pathologist in New South Wales.