Angela Greynor, Recently Gone
Walking through the door,
I know this isn’t our kitchen.
Your phone is on the counter,
my coat hung up on the back door.
Maybe I can’t recognise, not anymore.
It’s warm as I look down;
an apple crumble is browning in our oven.
I never learnt to bake.
To leave it would be a cremation,
but taking it out means choices –
can I eat the last warm piece of you?
Touching your chair I scowled at,
I ask for a hug but it won’t turn around.
I crumple on the tiles you said were the perfect touch.
My hand tries to squeeze them but scratches.
Tears fall to splashes whilst I think
“What about the rest of the house?”
Crawling through the door,
I know this isn’t our home, just mine,
only not even mine anymore.
* Frances Atkins is a twenty-two year old MA Creative Writing student, currently living in Exeter, UK. Her poems have previously been published is student-run magazines and she hopes to widen her readership in the coming years. She has a special interest in Canadian modernist poetry after living there for six months and more of her work can be found at http://francesatkinspoetry.blogspot.com/
