Author: Alice Ewens

There is room enough And time enough To make a home In our small lives We strive towards each other With arms thrown wide to sing Warmth into the wallpaper, The bricks and bright red kitchen That will hold us steady Through all our storms Throw the bones of our past into the foundations To make it strong To make it magic To make it alive with the ghosts of where we’ve been I will build hours of silence and sunlight And good cups of tea Into the song of this house Fill it with love Just love.

We're never as found as we thought we were. You give me something I can hold on to When the lines blur, My harness when the nitrous gets punched. I can’t catch my breath long enough to hear the war drum of my pulse, But I’ve a hunch that your name is a battle cry that screams from my lips. I can’t tip my voice to that high note long enough to feel the keening in my bones, But your train-track scars are the antidote to my fear of the unknown, My panic-attack surrender flag waving from the parapet, You flash Morse code to guide me Home.

You full moon eyes, star-spattered-sky face, One finger tracing lifelines to keep your place, The heart line undiscovered, wild, untamed, Framed in first-day nerves and gym bag too big. They never tell you you don’t need half the shit in there. You won’t read half the shit they tell you to, Of the half you care to, some tiny spark might ring true, Some tiny bird might take flight, You, frazzle-haired and worried stare, The louder kids at the back of the bus Make you fuss, crooked stick-bone fingered, at your buttons. They’ve only learnt to bluster their not even-a-storm-yet, but One day you’ll become them, less alive than right now. You, lip-chewed stiff-shoed, so tiny, Last days of summer, and so much more, a sun-stained halo, A ghost of…