Imagine rain as moments
in free-fall, the sky miles
of cold falling and air
thrashing past until
one green leaf catches
a dazzle of drops,

whole worlds suspended
untouched inside each,

along with memories
of every other moment
that drop has lived through –
falling from a different
cloud in a different country
at a different time.

In one, a heart-shaped
hot tub, yellow macs
and the happy thunder
of Niagara, angel-wings
spraying clothes, dreams
and upturned faces.

In another, a scraggy hole
hollowed in undergrowth,
the same outline shape
that depression digs
inside me, low and twiggy
enough to hide in for years.

Like this, a fingertip nudge
all it would take for the two
to roll together. But which
moment would be strongest,
blurring out the other?

For a second, the water
is nothing but drops of light
glistening with possibility.

Shadows shift and I recall
that I was trying to pick
two moments/worlds where
our different happinesses
might merge. Not this clash
of my own extremes,
that leave little room
for another to thrive.

Wetness brushes my face,
now as thin-skinned
as a winter leaf.
I wipe it with the back
of my hand, taste brine,
churned earth and the red
liquorice of your tongue.

‘The Frog Princess’ is in response to “Frog Prince” by Carella Keil.

Sarah Leavesley/James is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer, journalist and photographer. Her latest collections are Darling Blue (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2025), which won the Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize 2024, and Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic (Verve Poetry Press, 2022), winner of the CP Aware Award Prize for Poetry 2021 and highly commended in the Forward Prizes. Nine out of ten of Sarah’s solo poetry titles have won or been shortlisted/highly commended for an award and she has been running V. Press since 2013, publishing other writers’ poetry and flash fiction. Website: www.sarah-james.co.uk.