I wait for your palm against the door

Rebecca Goss

There was a death and we, the parents, have been told first.

You don’t yet know of the assembly planned, the

unscheduled file into the hall so I’m at home imagining

the reds and blues of your books on a desk, your deliberate

rise from your seat. I’m imagining you take up your place

in an assigned row and imagining what you will feel

when you look to the stage—a woman’s arms outspread,

hovering wide, atypical breeze feathering heads below,

her throat all stuttered pulsations, neck tilting back before

the death comes as a caw from your headteacher’s mouth

and everything you know about death already, at that

precise point, walls lined with teachers weeping, will be tested.

Because everyone who died died before you were born.

And everyone who dies lives in our radio, its darkening babble

from a messy kitchen surface. This day, today, Monday,

I’m imagining how you will leave school carrying the death

and for those fifteen minutes until your palm is flat against

our door the death will be alive in your head because the child

younger than you was alive only days ago, and I don’t know

if all the griefs I’ve shared with you will be enough to get you home.

REBECCA GOSS is a poet and mentor. She is the author of four full-length collections and two pamphlets. Her second collection, Her Birth (Carcanet, 2013), was shortlisted for several prizes including the 2013 Forward Prize for Best Collection. She won the Sylvia Plath Prize in 2022. Her latest collection is Latch (Carcanet, 2023).