WHEN MY BODY REMEMBERS

Laura Strickland

I talk to the blowtorch in my chest

as though she is a child scared

by a sudden knock at the window.

I give her a drink and wipe her brow,

turn her flame down to a blue flicker.

To stop me doing something rash 

like text him back    fuck    you...

when he says he won’t visit our son,

she fires warning flares so I pause

and take the bins out.

At night she asks –

Are monsters under the bed?

Is it your dad crashing down the stairs? 

I tell her no; they’re only ghosts darling –

go back to sleep.

 

Laura Strickland is a carer and MA student at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her work has appeared in The North, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Dreamcatcher, Northern Gravy, Strix, The Frogmore Papers, High Window, Obsessed by Pipework and Butcher’s Dog. She is one of 20 poets included in Poetry Archive's Worldview 2023; highly commended in Nine Arches Primers; one of 12 poets selected for Lancaster Literature's Mosaic 2023 and was longlisted in the National Poetry Competition 2023.