Emily
i.m Emily Jackson, January 1976
Can you hear the storm Emily?
Listen how it breaks the slates free,
how it clatters them into the yards
and the houses give in.
Tomorrow the bloke from number nine
will ring and say,
Can you come down? Bloody roof’s gone.
I’m looking at the pissing sky through me ceiling.
Tonight, let the Gaiety wait -
go to the chippy,
make cocoa for the kids,
pour yourself a drink,
bring a blanket from upstairs,
put Coronation Street on.
In the morning you can stock up the van,
take Syd to his jobs,
drop the kids off at school,
see Jean and Mary from the mill –
but hold on for tonight Emily,
for tonight, hold on.
Split Second
I squeeze through families
shouting and shouting his name
in my blue cashmere coat
I bought from Age Concern –
the way it swishes as I move
makes me feel like a good mother
who would be taken seriously
if I said I’d lost my son.
I push pass a woman with a trolley
full of wine, and when I turn to ask
if she’s seen a blonde boy
in a Minions t shirt,
I imagine the blue of his lips
when I’m asked to identify him,
then all the sound goes –
as he skips from the toilets
like he’s coming through arrivals
and I’m there to welcome him home.
_______________
Laura Strickland is a carer and MA student from Yorkshire. Publications include The North, Butcher's Dog, Propel, Strix, Northern Gravy, Dreamcatcher and The Frogmore Papers. She was longlisted in the 2023 National Poetry Competition.
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