Show Don’t Tell Was Easier by Anna Kahn

For Anita

She hands me a sheaf on which she has spilt someone else’s blood and asks me to edit. I mark with hesitance, black ink because red won’t show. It is tricky to suggest justice to facts two layers of truth away from your own without overstepping. She hands. She asks. I mark with someone else’s blood. She hands me two layers of truth on which justice has spilt without overstepping. She hands me red because black ink won’t show justice. It is tricky to edit someone else’s blood, a sheaf of truth, two layers to suggest away overstepping the spilt facts with hesitance, but she asks and I mark.


Anna Kahn is the host of the Unfinished Edits podcast. She’s a Barbican Young Poet and a former member of the Roundhouse Collective. Her work has been published by The London Magazine, Right Hand Pointing and The Rialto, amongst others. By day she does something inexplicable in tech.