My Father Bought a Signal Box
dismantled it piece by piece
then sold the wood, as a job lot.
He found railway station drawings
a monogrammed letter opener
and a gold-nibbed ink pen
which contained a withered bladder
with the remnants of midnight ink.
Linda Ford is from the East Midlands. Her debut collection is Lucent (Erbacce 2022), and her work has appeared in The Rialto, and is forthcoming in Under the Radar. In 2024 she was awarded third place in the Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year competition.