Here is a cross
You said you’d never die
here.
Here are your Sundays watching your children’s birthdays
on your screen. Here are your winters crating up grocery trucks,
pineapples scratching rough skin. Here are your summers
slating the roofs of Europe. You said you’d build
behind your elders’ house. A villa, bright orange concrete.
Here is a cross.
Upon the morning mist a divination line, a black bedsheet
a poem in dye, words fold onto each other: Hopes, Home, How
soon. A yellow T-shirt saying Ole Ole Ole. A pair of warm socks.
You will make it through, you know that much.
What through means, you don’t know.
What is on the other side
of through.
Raluca David has been shortlisted for the Queen Mary Wasafiri NW Prize as well as the Starkie and Dart Poetry Prizes, and longlisted for the National Poetry Competition. Her poetry has appeared in the Oxford Review of Books. Instagram: @ralucafdavid