Hunger

I bury my dead in this garden. Over there, under the cabbage roses. They haunt me through the day. At night, they sleep in the shadow of a fig tree with branches as wide as an archangel’s wings. I used to sit there and knit the smallest of garments. I chose thin needles and fine woollen yarn; I never dropped a single stitch. My husband and I don’t speak of that anymore; I put those tools away at his insistence. Who did he think he was helping? Now I fashion makeshift shrouds from whatever I can find, I pick at fallen leaves and discarded feathers of lucent blue, I peel the soft skin from the paperbarks. I try to keep my children quiet, but their ghosts play ring-a-rosy while I work. The chime of their glass laughter leaves me teetering. I no longer clean the crescents of dirt that crust beneath my fingernails or bother with snags in my hair. When he wraps me in the weight of his compassion, I’m cool as frost. He says I drift away like smoke, but he doesn’t bleed like me, he doesn’t see how tenderly I rest my palm on their cradles of soil, how I nurture every blossom. Ghost babies are born with sharp teeth. They eat through my womb. They wail beneath the fat cabbage roses; they gnaw at my back when I turn my head away. They are ravenous.

*A version of Hunger was longlisted in Reflex in the Autumn award in 2022 and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize for Flash Fiction.*