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Two poems by Laetitia Erskine

5th September 2022  Laetitia Erskine

In ‘S c r a p e of time’ and ‘Womb Dream’, Laetitia Erskine takes a vivid dive into the sounds and rhythms of memory and dreamscapes, all the way back to the womb itself.

Sc r a p e of time

Near silent paws of our cat treading the floorboards

A duet with the hammer of your typewriter through the night 

And in the morning the scrape of the curtain hooks

You opened them every day as I opened my eyes

The will you put to each dawn 

Shamed my growing limbs

Between sleep and day, the bony heft of you rose, rose again in the room below

A shape unseen that scored a memory echoing with that scraping sound 

I  cast  my   line    to     years    to    come

Knowing that sound would  scrape     scrape     

And    I    might     still     

Know      

Nothing

The day you died    I  walked      I  stood     

Our cat walked in the garden

Outside your study window 

I could feel its dark stare behind me 

The desk the same 

Untouched but already shaped

I knew the pot, the pad, the cigarette box

Wondered if our cat knew too

But could not wonder then how long I would hear 

The phantom tread of floorboards 

The hammer and the scrape of time 

Womb Dream

The red

The dark

The dark red beat

The dark

The red

The beat

I rose in the night

Jolt of current in the curtained room

My sister was sleeping

My voice

Was trapped

A thrum was rising – a drum thick as breath

Not verbal

Too palpable 

Drifting to my mother

Down silent stairs

Bright shafts through the door

Burble of a lit TV 

Furled in her gown

I curled on her heart

My self too large

Through my whole head I listened 

Nested to wait at the gate of an impossible contour 

The beat 

The beat

The red dark beat

A knot

Unravelled through us 

A coil of it

Unspooled

A bubble 

A laugh 

Spilled from my lips

‘That was no bad dream,’ said my mother 

Gave me the slip

As if she didn’t know

The message she had written herself

Climbing back 

To my room 

In shadow 

Opaque as old thoughts

My sister slept on

Delicate pulse of life, wash of sound, flickering filament 

Primitive electricity, a force in the swim of it 

Immersed alone 

Seeing blind 

But fused 

In the dark 

Beat

Of the womb

The beat the dark the dark red beat of the womb

About Laetitia Erskine

Laetitia Erskine is a writer based in London. She most often writes about love, loss, and women’s experience, and explores the boundaries between daily life and the metaphysical, in variously surreal, absurd, comical and poignant ways. Her poetry and short fiction have been published in Lunate, The Phare, Lucy Writers Platform and Popshot Quarterly. She is married with two children and a cat and is completing her first novel.

Feature image: Photo by Krišjānis Kazaks on Unsplash

Posted in Creative Writing, PoetryTagged: dreams, memory, Poetry

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