She sits in an origami fold/
angled away from this triangle family.
I open windows/
climb stairs.
Go to sleep, I call into sharp darkness,
closing the door to our attic living room;
its gold handle, like a cat’s tongue against my palm.
In lamplight, I wrap birthday presents by the yucca plant;
leaves cast spiky shadows across my baby,
asleep beside me like a velvet rock.
And still, the other one’s needs seep through cracks,
a penetrating white noise —
I switch the fan on, turn the tv volume up.
I text her father
I can’t do this.
Alone in the land of you-are-not-my-mother.
Last week, I pushed hair off clammy foreheads,
bought cheerful plastic to assuage the guilt.
I placate my children with these offerings;
like knives to the future.
Most nights, I place a cool glass of water by her bed.
Before she sleeps, I sit with her —
try to finish the long novel I chose,
because I thought it might be good for her,
and maybe she’d like it.
In my nightmare she is smashed by a fast white car/
Her father’s face a fractured plate of horror.
And under terror’s waking veil,
my baby suckles at my breast;
mouth wide open
my sweet, thin sustenance.
Caged by my daughter’s fingers/
anxiety splinters the house.
I am wet with sweat and somehow, also, cold/
Hairs stand erect in gooseflesh.
My husband, back from football, snores, turns over.
He cups my exposed buttock with a dry hand.
We fall asleep like that.
Katie Beswick is a writer from south east London. Her poems have recently appeared in Ink Sweat & Tears; Harpy Hybrid Review; English: Journal of the English Association and Mukoli: The Magazine for Peace, among others. Her debut chapbook Plumsted Pram Pushers, is forthcoming from Red Ogre in summer 2024. Her poetry installation Being Slaggy was a sellout feature of Camden People’s Theatre 2024 SPRINT Festival. She teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Rough Diamond Poetry 