<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Afterwards<\/strong><\/p>\n That very last night at my parents\u2019 house It drew blood, pulled as if at a worm, A silence followed, as sudden Early next day, eyes raw from lack of sleep, <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Nicky Phillips<\/strong> lives in Hertfordshire. Her poems have been published in magazines and online. In 2017 one was nominated for Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Her pamphlet Jam in Aisle 3<\/em> was published by Dempsey & Windle in 2018.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Afterwards That very last night at my parents\u2019 house it was as though a blackbird waited on the fence and, watching, saw my tears, flew down, pecked into the crack, opening, its sharp yellow beak homing straight to the heart. It drew blood, pulled as if at a worm, leant back, bracing, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20384,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20383\/revisions\/20384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nit was as though a blackbird waited
\non the fence and, watching, saw my tears,
\nflew down, pecked into the crack, opening,
\nits sharp yellow beak homing straight to the heart.<\/p>\n
\nleant back, bracing, ready to gulp down
\nas a corner broke free,
\na piece of me taken for ever.<\/p>\n
\nas the quiet of a solar eclipse.<\/p>\n
\nI watched the cars pull up outside the gate,
\nheard a faint chorus of birdsong begin.<\/p>\n