‘I found it particularly hard as a dad.’
Keir Starmer, Prime Minister’s statement in the House on historic forced adoption
I’ve been staring at the blank page of this notebook for an hour. I close my eyes and breathe in for four, hold for four and out for eight, then repeat three times. I open my eyes, take the lid off my pen and set a timer for fifteen minutes. I need the pressure of a deadline. I start to list the things I wish you would ask me. It’s been three years since I found you, and you haven’t asked a single question about me or my life. It’s been a year since I suggested we meet but you haven’t replied to that email. The timer vibrates. I put my pen down even though I’m in the middle of a sentence. I go to the kitchen to make a coffee, and I think about my father. Every time I ask him what he’s worried about, he laughs and says a problem shared is a problem doubled. After five minutes, I go back to my desk and assess what I’ve written. Twenty questions in neat cursive that morphs into an erratic scrawl; I had so much I needed to get down before my time ran out. I bought this notebook because it’s full of holes; there’s a line of perforations running down the margin of each page, so I can remove my mistakes and pretend they never existed. There’s an arc punctured at the outside corner on the bottom of every page. I like to tear the corners off to remind me how far I’ve made it through. I pull one away. I press it against the roof of my mouth and hold it there with my tongue, so my saliva softens the paper. I rip out more corners, pile them on my tongue and swallow. I tear out the page of questions then place a ruler on the loose page and shred it into strips. I rip each strip into squares that I roll up and layer over my tongue. I close my mouth and swallow. I write diagonally across a fresh page: WILL YOU DIE BEFORE I HAVE A CHANCE TO MEET YOU? I remove the page, scrunch it up whole, cram it into my mouth with my fingers and gag as I push it down my throat.
Emma Dandy‘s poetry explores the fragmentation of identity after trauma. She has been widely published in journals and anthologies including The Ekphrastic Review, Atrium, and The Honest Ulsterman. Emma won the Fish Publishing Haiku Prize 2026. Instagram: @emmadandypoetry