What she left me to find, on waking

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imagine the scene:

decapitated head, severed limbs

 

and a police cordon: fences, tapes

around the immediate area

chalk marks around the scattered

parts

 

and the little post-it notes, the tiny writing

directing the reader, half-asleep

but now arrested in the act of reaching

for a tooth-brush,

to examine

 

still sticky,

the unwashed lego—

 

her meticulous recreation

of our fall-apart grief, as

comedy.

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Hannah Linden, from a northern working-class background, lives in ramshackle social housing in Devon. She won the Cafe Writers Poetry Competition 2021, Highly Commended in Wales Poetry Award 2021. Her debut pamphlet, The Beautiful Open Sky, (V. Press) was shortlisted for Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet 2023. X: @hannahl1n

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