She will not die whilst I feed her
middle-of-the-night letters. During
the day she thins to a tamed domestic
but at night she is ravenous again.
Hunger circles its apologies against
my creaking door and I have nothing
left to feed it. Dust mites nestle
into the spaces of my allergic reactivity.
I may never sleep through the whole night
again. I listen to scientists try to explain
why black holes are more common
than they had anticipated. Imminence
clicks into its role and I am reviewing
how the laws of physics I learnt never could
work across different applications. Will
they finally work out a unifying theory?
And I am writing to her again, the same
questions, explanations, basic incompatible
moral codes. And it feels like the universe
is an increasingly hostile environment
when all I wanted to do was love her.
Hannah Linden is neurodivergent and queer, from a northern working-class background and lives in ramshackle social housing in Devon, UK. Her most recent awards include 1st prize Cafe Writers Poetry Competition 2021, Highly Commended Wales Poetry Award 2021, and 2nd Prize Leeds Peace Poetry Prize 2024. She is published widely and her debut pamphlet, The Beautiful Open Sky, (V. Press) was shortlisted for the Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet 2023. BlueSky: @hannahl1n.bsky.social