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341st Weekly Poetry Contest winner: Cwmtillery

by Catherine Edmunds

Months after returning from space, he still lets go
of objects in mid-air, fully expecting them to float.
But he’s just twelve years old, it’s 1857. He can’t
explain any of this to his Mam. Insistent rain
streams through the broken cottage. His nan rocks
back and forth, his Mam’s forehead trembles
against the window. He takes a stick of coloured
pastel, draws Martian sunsets on fine-toothed paper.
Father still hasn’t come home. The water runs
pale reddish across the flagstones. The only way
he knows love is to enmesh it in his images. He lets
the pastel go. It drops to the floor and shatters.
The stream takes up the dust of colour, takes it
away from him forever. Father is never this late.

Previously published in "How to Win at King's Cross"

See all the entrants to 341st Weekly Poetry Contest