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31st May, 2024

Friday Poem – ‘Chink’ by Siobhán Campbell

Photo of a crumpled white duvet

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Chink’ by Siobhán Campbell from her collection Heat Signature.

Chink
I dare not move before our baby wakes
in case we lose these last moments of doze.
You have your morning tic, a click-jaw
loud enough to wake even the daws that nest
in our bedroom chimney stack. The room shrinks
to your impending clack and my full nose, waiting
for a sneeze. We’re fixed, long enough to look once
at each other, each a sleep-drooled, chosen lover.
Our toes graze, by accident we think, a touch
we will not gauge till later. I break, reach
for a tissue, notice that we have open peepers.
This, the first time she wakes without a cry.
She has become the keeper of our gaze,
her look, where we begin and end our days.