Figures in Bathroom Interior
Your father has called his own ambulance,
lying in a field next to his tractor as if
unlikely friends in a coming-of-age film.
This is our bathroom, compressed into a fine
sliver of time in which you heard the news.
The look as you considered your own cut
fingernails in the sink. I keep watching this sort of
unbearable jamming. Your grief. And your grief.
I have gone through the fabric of it
trying to change things. See: my feet hanging
in the flat below as two cutouts at dinner
confirm there’s nothing more than this memory.
Know, I will do what it takes to keep us vertical
this afternoon. I will read your shopping list
back to you, each word
light as plastic fruit. I will bend
your fingers to cup the air in front of you.
Rachael Brown is a writer from Worcestershire, UK. She is currently undertaking an MA in Writing Poetry with The Poetry School. Her work is published in ‘The North’.