My Father’s Words – Hannah Linden

My Father’s Words

from Wolf Daughter

In the less sure years he lay under silence
and it was so like death
I forgot to water him.

That’s when
older folk are supposed to bring
their watering cans.

It needs tears for sure, plenty of them.
The dead are thirsty in their long sleep
and the being-alive-again takes time.

Now he is not dead, he’s decided
to move into a different room
and the windows in this one

look out with my eyes, when
I open certain doors, his voice
walks through.

After the long winter, spring showers.
I feel leaves opening in me
pages and pages of rustling joy.

…

Hannah Linden won 1^st prize in the Cafe Writers Poetry Competition 2021. Her pamphlet The Beautiful Open Sky is forthcoming with V. Press. She is working towards a full collection, Wolf Daughter,  about the impact of parental suicide on children. Twitter: @hannahl1n