My city stained with fire

Vanessa Ackerman

after Hecuba by Euripides

We slept with our minds open

We waited for nothing

Only to remember beauty

In the faces of our young men

We asked

What about the devilish one,

should we pray for him too

The morning coffee is absolute

The stillness of the sky advancing

Is absolute

An army of birds following orders

And where I return to is where I have never been

The scent of an orange

The crumbling of walls

The silence in a tired street

The stairs climbed unbroken but nearly

The tea drunk subtly and with respect

The radio moving its faraway targets

And I am homeless in myself

And my daughter’s sleep tangles her hair

And when she wakes she is half crazed

And our secrets are

the bullets under our tongues

And we speak to each other

In a language of stones

hidden like children

We say the morning rain has no story

It simply closes its heavy door

We say this is the year of my un-doubling

A long door, the long hallway

I walk but not here

I pray but not in the night

I gently speak, sometimes,

but not out loud

VANESSA ACKERMAN trained as an actor at LAMDA and has worked for the RSC and the Royal Court. She writes plays and poems. Her poems have appeared in publications such as Propel, Marble Poetry, Icarus, Cephalo Press, Tears in the Fence, Stand Magazine, and Anthropocene amongst others. Her poem ‘Antigone’ was a 2024 Best of the Net Nominee. Her collection Small Rebellions was a winner of the 2023 Dreich Classic Chapbook Competition.