A very small thing.
I found your fingernail
creased inside the poetry
I read to you. A dry paring,
thin crescent, white
as a hospital tag, cut
when you could still fight me,
with your vowels and yelping,
with the stricture of your hands.
I thought you were all gone.
Now I am obsessed with eye lashes,
with sweat, with residue
of breath.
I keep your windows shut.
I do not dust.
Ann Heath lives in York. She has been published in Aesthetica and Dreamcatcher. She previously won the local writer’s prize in the Yorkmix Poetry Competition.