Texts written at the Ty Newydd Writing Centre, Llanystumdwy, Cricieth, Gwynedd, 17.3.16.
Authors: Sarah Blake, Emma Ormond, Kaye Lee, Yuko Adams, Camilla Lambert, Jennie Bailey, Barry
Tutor: Robert Minhinnick
I don’t know where we lost her. She isn’t here. That is all I know. Maybe it happened right at the start. I don’t remember how. I carry on conversations with her in my head. I don’t mean to. Thoughts slip into her. Mud on my boots. Numb hands. I talk to her every day here. I remember her hand holding mine inside her coat pocket on the way to school. I remember sitting at her feet, watching her draw. Her hands have oval nails and there are plump lines in her palms. How soft she was. I remember the face cream trace she left in the air and how she always burned the onions. Never had the patience to let them sweat slowly, turn sweet and yielding in the pan.
My jumper is made of links,
rough and bubbled, sutures
of thin thread that cannot
close the wounds underneath
which are only superficial on the surface on the surface
buried in it my nose unearths
dirt, sweat. Hope, petrol and apples,
the taste of cold stone and vinegar
as I are them,
the wool creaks, stiff from its journey,
shedding grit and dirt,
remnants carried with me from home.
I will never let it be washed.
These trousers would steam
if I ever found somewhere warm.
They still have the salty grit
of two days on a boat
and tonight I’ll keep them on
when we lie down under the sheets
of plastic, our make-do home.
I can’t pray anymore, my head and my heart are sodden, too many uncried tears, saltier than
Aisha’s sea-wet jacket – the jacket
that her granny wrapped round
her shoulders as we climbed into the truck.
I wish I could sleep – a few hours -
to dream we’re back home,
to forget the razor wire
that tears us to shreds
if we try to move on.
I come across a rose
That is standing in a front garden
On my way to nowhere.
I sniff and smell the scent
but it is too meagre
as I cannot step in.
In the next town I arrive
I may find another rose
but I don’t think I can smell it.
It’s somebody else’s rose
growing from somebody else’s soil
I cannot grasp.
Mehemet has woken up crying
like last night and the one before.
His head is hot like a burnt potato.
At home we’d fetch the pink medicine
from the bathroom cupboard, tuck the quilt
my mother made, scraps of red and brown
from her mother’s village, soothe him.
He’d be better in the morning.
Here, no medicine, once we’d used up
the stuff they gave us near the fence,
no quilt, just a pile of all our clothes,
smelling of mud, a musty, cheesy smell.
I am lying on my side again, I feel
In my pocket for the crooked house key:
It fits my fingers like it always did.
It’s getting light, earlier now, invading
through the cracks in the tent,
won’t be kept out, allow one more hour
of not remembering. The others
are moving about, a few curses from
those Aleppo people, different consonants,
same whine in the nostrils.
It’s raining again.
My heart still beats fast. I have just woken up, but remain curled up under my old army greatcoat on what I think is a slate floor. The cold slate causes me to roll over on to my other hip. I cannot feel my left shoulder, but hopefully it will get better circulation now I have moved.
I can hear the clatter of cattle hooves, this could be a farm. I wonder if I should look for a drink of water, or risk seeking out someone to help me.
I have counted
red ants that slip into my sleeping bag.
I have counted
stars in a snowglobe sky.
I have counted
degrees downward to freezing.
This evening I saw
children clustered in feathered clothes around fires.
This evening I saw
blood sunset over the Jungle.
This evening I saw
shield beetle man beat women with black batons.
In the morning
perhaps swallow blue ribbons instead of black flags.
In the morning
perhaps a weak sun will waken wings.
