Shortening Day
There’s a coup across the sea. You had told me
that was unrealistic. I keep walking
under the low sun that strikes the leaves -
they’re red. I make a sweet cup
of tea and sweep my thumb across a cool
screen. Screams fall out. I put it down.
Breathe. A newly-formed babe bounces on a knee.
‘I wonder what he’ll be’, she says.
‘Something in marketing’ smiles another.
My turn to wonder. What do they think there’ll be
to market in thirty, or fifty, years?
Doesn’t seem realistic to me.
A spread of croissants on a table, including gluten
and without. It is not the darkest day,
somehow. There is more to go.
Was it ever darker though?
Spring is an idea. I bring flowers
inside to hold it in mind.
A television blares. A baby wails.
A buttery croissant flakes apart
in my hands. A last dollop of jam.
Hanna Thomas Uose is a British Japanese writer and interdisciplinary strategist, facilitator and coach for social change. Her poetry has been published and is forthcoming in Bad Form, Crooked Arrow Press, and The Selkie. She is writing her first novel and starting her MA in Prose Fiction at UEA in September.