Fighting the Easterly

The women tell me about a loyal husband
or brother,​ or son
he snuck under police tape
rushed up the back steps
to the sound of waves
timpani on granite blocks
wind a wild crescendo
salt-spray crashing cymbals

he reached up
big hands pianissimo
hefted their treasured millennial tapestry
hid it in his garage for them
just in case
the building gave way

Blue

blue blurred line on a hurried pregnancy test the blue gloves that haul you out of my womb giving you bruises that bloomed blue as agapanthus along the shoreline of your crib blue glows in the dark like bitter Curaçao thin blue line between success and fail and some days I fail no matter what I do

blue your eyes when you wake and stare lovingly which is rare blue marks where my fingers grab your thick toddler arms blue telltale feather marking out a jay blue is the need for air blue like that bird in Rio flying high blue-bottomed monkeys howling out your diagnoses blue Smurf faces frozen numb all of them singing the blues

wanting you to be more like the other children standing in a neat blue line at the school gates blue your ringbound files on my shelf blue a forbidden ink in the NHS blue the people carrier when I wanted a bike blue is used blood returning to source you turn the air blue and right now I don’t love you

our eyes matching blue as sea cascades into sky oh that antifouling paint tattoos my fingernails and gets up my nose and we’re dreaming of the same horizon you’re jumping over waves and squealing with delight and indigo woad slathered onto my soul like hot dogs with sauce I wouldn’t have chosen but this is perfect

Gypsy

My great-granny (on me mum’s side)
was a gypsy.
Few photos remain: piebald pony, piled pegs, her cradling a baby.
Men in a row, hand gripping the shoulders of a kneeling boy.
And her – hard-faced pipe-smoking woman on the wooden steps of her caravan,
staring into grey gloss sky.

Something of the flat cap and ferret dreams my sky.
I’d clay-roast a hedgehog and keep mum
about it. Oh, I yearn for long trips in a cramped van.
Something of the gypsy
lingers in my blood. I distrust suits, hate hospitals. Oh boy.
I snap my hen’s necks, shove ’em in the slow-cooker. They’re not babies.

Anyway, that soft baby
in the sepia photo, sweet as sky,
is not a rosy-cheeked boy.
She’s me mum.
A chestnut-skinned gypsy wild child,
settling to whispered trees and faint sway of caravan.

Me mum’s dad (my granddad – keep up!) lives in the smaller van
next-door, with his blonde gorger bride.
When she found tum round with babby
she told her new gyppo mum-in-law, expecting praise.
Who, stern-faced, took a bottle of whisky
and said she could sort this out.

You don’t have to be a mum,
I know my boy
and he’s not into girls, it’s boys
that rev his van.
Woodsmoke catches throat.
Handshake soft as cow parsley?
You daft bint. Keep mum.

Me mum’s mum raged campfire. My baby
is mine. I won’t down your whisky.
I’ll keep this gypsy child.
This may be a sham gypsy wedding
but I will buoy it up
through love.

I swear blind; true sky
she carried to term. Gave birth not in a car or van
but – like me – in a hated cottage hospital. Called her baby
Ros, not Rose. That fierce lurcher mother? Me gran.
Her baby? Me mum.

So I’m cruel gypsy on me mum’s dad’s side, wanderlust like caravans
swaying movement seeded into blood. My outcast wild boy baby
drives me mackerel sky crazy, he grabs my heart,
I’m his fierce mum.

Room

fear and trust are uneasy
birdsong

can’t see directly behind me​
no interior rear-view mirror

to begin with wasn’t a home at all
roof barely topped two rooms

mould speckled
bare kitchen walls

today doing the washing up
talkative as sky post-cloudburst

rain glosses mussed hair
earthed​, fierce mostly

joy and love
comrades in chainmail

Maine, 1997

the summer I loved & it loved me
the summer of dreams
the summer where I realised it was ending & I would not
could not come back & even if I did, there would be only ghosts, drifting in
quiet places between trees, shapeless pollen motes lifting
on warm air, as if so many small yellow bees
& I left on that jet plane
looked down & imagined him there
on smooth pale limestone
hiking to the treeline
smelling of cheap cigarettes
shirtsleeves rolled up to the shoulders
his laugh, his tacky goatee
his penchant for pepperoni pizza
yeah, it’s a Dunkin Donuts kinda day
& I’d agree, pine needles clogging
my heart, eyes stinging with happiness &
knowing that
sure as grits are grits, this would
end

III Missed Carriageway

The D & C is, as she’s promised, a straightforward proceeding
hosing down the insides, washing the womb
not to have
​​all that gunk inside me

[your hornets will go crazy]
[you will crystal for three days straight]
[you will mourn your lotion]

by now, I’m cryogenic.

bloodstained tears all over our new white sofa

it’s not that I had my heart set on a baby
it’s just that I was ready for one
planting ahead, like some peppercorn planet

nextyearsholidaysnewkitchennanextensionorpatioswansong

Sleep. Cryptic. Sleep.

Ella Walsworth-Bell is a speech therapist living in Falmouth, Cornwall. Her credits include Leon Literary Review, Annie Magazine, Mythic Circle and her short story ‘Knitting for teenage boys’ placed second in the Perito Prize. She leads Mor Poets, a women’s poetry collective that write about the sea. ‘Blue’ appeared in Leon Literary Review, ‘Room’ in Strix.