Before
In a swathe of red colour you arrive,
your body slumped to that of a child;
your shoulders are very thin.
If I were to begin this again
I would say that sometimes to be born
at the wrong time can lead to all sorts of problems.
You arrive in the picture, pinks and corals
like the womb. And as you stand on a doorstep,
that is in fact a bar of light, I remember how
happy you looked. The blue of the sky
drags into everything, fades inside the soft
square you stand in. And the garden path
becomes a journey into death. And the only
journey back into life is more to do with what
nature can offer than any thought of god.
Liz Adams is a poet whose work has appeared in Shadowtrain, morphrog, Stand, #NewWriting, Ghosts of Gone Birds (Bloomsbury), etc. Her book of poems, Green Dobermans, was published in 2011. She lives in Exeter where she co-hosts Uncut Poets.