The ghost of my mother knows the names of everything, but
she can’t tell me, because ghosts, whatever you have heard
to the contrary, can’t speak.

I walk the flat barefoot,
step over old dreams
still curled like cats
in the corners.

& you’ll understand if i leave open this theatre of air
not as the invite for another loss
but to honour their world unwilling to collapse

Language reinvents itself,
coruscates in signs on walls;
falls silent, mute as clay and stone
on tablets that enshrine its form.

The river is an old demon
& my heart is an infirm creature
The river is sure of its way
& my heart is capable of lies.

glass-tooth morning.
salt mouth.
i left the stove on just to feel wanted.

Still —
I kept
writing.

Sometimes
just:
“Hi.”

Inside my bedroom I take a fresh blade
pull off my jumper, examine the ladder
in front of the mirror cut through my laces
rung by rung

That’s when she went to ground,
after she disobeyed, painted her plastic tea set
red, hidden away in the playhouse they built
down where bindweed draped