Not all photographs belong in albums
It’s Christmas morning and his face
is a stale balloon.
His brined eyes seek something
beyond this house. And her,
in Care Bear pyjamas
clutching the Sindy horse and carriage
in its pink and white box,
her eyes wide as mushrooms.
She leans to him the way children
make lions of the fathers they have.
Let me reach in and shift his weight
to the wall. Let me fold her
like paper into the dolls’ house
and tell its scaly feet to run deep
deep into the Baba Yaga’s forest.
…
Abigail Flint is a heritage researcher from Sheffield. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in a range of magazines including Under the Radar, Ink Sweat and Tears, Reliquiae, Popshot Quarterly, About Larkin, 192 magazine, and research project anthologies. Twitter: @constantunusual
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