By Áine Vane

I
People tend to think that snails
don’t have the capacity to think or feel.

But I count the rings.
I know their age.

I think we project onto those smaller things because
we all secretly want to be something mindless.

We all want to be smaller than life itself.
To think is to be. To feel. To live. Here lies the issue.

At my first job I could stare through these clouded windows
at trees chopped down to make fairy-like thrones.

I count the rings.
I know their age.

How old they should have been.
A rich man spits in my face and I wonder

if this is how it feels to be a snail.
A rich man spits in my face and

I think of who I used to be, bolder
not yet beaten down by cruel classmates with

crueler words. A rich man spits in my face
and one million years ago, I spat back at him.

I wonder if a snail would know rage.
Even a worm, says a man tougher than nails

who trained you to be brittle.
Not your father. Look deeper.

I wonder if a man would crush beneath my weight
as easy as a snail might.

I wonder if a snail ever wishes it could be
smaller than life itself.

II
There is no such thing as an individual.
There is no original thought.

Here I am.
I am a copy of a copy of a copy.

This is an absolute fact.
But is that really so terrible?

I am my mother, spat out, morbid and twisted.
I would not recognize my fathers face if I knew it.

All we ever read is the same story
just with a different narrative voice.

I am nostalgic for the things I never experienced.
I miss people I’ve never met, places I’ve never been.

Hell, you’ve probably heard this one before.
We are untarnished by time

I will write myself into oblivion
as the geniuses of past lives –

unchanged by the revolving world.
You can’t change the past

who now guide my shaking, feeble hands,
who taught them need – once did

and you won’t change the future.

and is there no joy in this?

–

Áine Vane (they/them) is an aspiring young writer who comes from a childhood of reading which has molded their life forever. They enjoy the macabre and the beautiful, especially when the two collide. They are currently studying English, Politics and Philosophy in Scotland.