farmer’s market

by Luís Costa

instead of allowing myself to be happy I keep trying

to find you exploring the tight curves of bell peppers,

your laugh echoing within the crunch of sourdough,

a smile lingering as the sharpness of sheep’s cheese,

hiding melancholia inside green olives’ salty brines,

ghosts tucked so tightly in the shadows of fig leaves,

hesitantly pacing between the honeys and the jams,

lavender bunches chosen to mask a grey loneliness.

I used to love you on Saturday mornings – now I go

to the farmer’s market and pretend you’re still around.  

Luís Costa (he/they) is an anxious queer poet featured multiple times in Visual Verse, Stone of Madness and Queerlings, as well as in Inksounds, Farside Review and FEED. Longlisted for the Out-Spoken Prize for Poetry in 2022, his debut pamphlet Two Dying Lovers Holding A Cat was published by Fourteen Poems in November 2023. He holds a PhD in Psychology from Goldsmiths and lives in London with his cat Pierożek. You can find him on Twitter @captainiberia