Hauntings
No-one has seen a ghost while breast-feeding
despite the unearthly hours, the half-light
mad sing-song routines of rocking a child
back to sleep. A potent cocktail of hormones.
Perfect conditions, you’d think,
for a woman to slip through the walls,
skulls unhinge their jaws, start to scream.
Hairbrushes take flight.
Perhaps this is proof of independent existence.
For if I could conjure spirits from bottomless wells
of wishful thinking, they’d be there,
claws gripped tight to the rail of the cot,
the protective beat of their wings
turning the jungle-themed mobile.
No, the dead, it appears, know the value of rest,
won’t disturb the already disturbed. But here
in this ambiguity of night and morning,
the peachy fuzz of skin against skin
blurs all boundaries of my body, and the world itself
is otherworldly: the will o’ the wisp glow
of a nightlight dancing, eyelids paper thin.
I watch the flickery movements of your dreams
shadows behind screens, and with each shift
of arm, soft puff of breath, almost direct them.
Emma Simon published her first collection, Shapeshifting for Beginners, with Salt Publishing in 2023. She has previously published two pamphlets,The Odds (Smith|Doorstop, 2020) and Dragonish (The Emma Press, 2017). She has been published in various magazines and anthologies and has won the Live Canon, Ver Poets, York Mix and Prole Laureate prizes.