Patience
I grow shoots, acid green;
climb the walls,
surprise myself.
I dream of the way
I would fall,
the axe’s half-diamond.
In the greenhouse,
light and water
make me tall, and
my tremulous leaves
scrawl love-letters
on the windowpane.
Emma Page lives in south-east London and works in a sixth-form college. Her work has appeared in Poetry London, iamb and The Best British Poetry 2011 and her pamphlet Lives of the Young Saints was shortlisted for the 2021 Cinnamon Prize.