FebulousFebruary 2026: The Old Photograph

Heron Road

We three stand in a photograph

creased at the corners,

A cramped city garden.

Our hair cropped close,

dykes, not gay girls.

Hands in pockets, feet planted wide,

leather and denim,

claiming space with confidence.

We did call it butch then—

and we knew we could be butch and women,

unafraid of being seen.

The photograph does not show

what came next.

The lovers who stayed,

the ones who left,

the ones we buried too early.

Now we look at it

our faces changed

by grief, by weather, by joy.

Some of us are thicker, slower, greyer.

What surprises me most

is not how much we have changed,

but how much we remain the same.

The tilt of a chin.

The defiance in the eyes.

Time has not erased us.

It has strengthened us.

It has taught our love new verbs:

to endure, to forgive,

to remember who stood where

when it mattered.

And in the photograph,

young, lit from the side,

we are still waiting

not for approval,

but for someone to look long enough

to see what was always there:

women who knew who they were,

and never needed permission

to take up space.

Kate, Ceredigion