Her knitting, now, is a pattern of absences,
words unhooking like laddering stitches.
She’s as light as a cake of candles,
memories falling off her.
She’d like to go proboscis first,
a white-tailed bumblebee, into a snapdragon’s lips;
climb into a long gone mother’s lap,
a swaddled child again, limbs tucked in.
Pull me to shore, she bothers the thin air,
the tide’s up all in a rip.
Post me inside out on your digital pages
blowing out a lifetime of flames.
Hold my bits and pieces orbiting
against the first cut of the strawberry cream sponge.
Joint winner of the Morecambe Poetry Festival Competition LA3/LA4 prize, September 2025. [Morecambe Poetry Festival Competition 2025 – Poets, Prattlers and Pandemonialists]
