Mslexia

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New Writing

Left in a loft, a baby’s clothes will yellow,
that’s what I was told and I thought of my

dead baby’s things, stuffed into sacks,
stirring with a benign mould. A year later

and pregnant, I yanked plastic bags
from their muggy, attic dark. Spilled

them like Christmas sacks and picked
my way through sleep suits, patchy

with promised lemon stains. Vests
scabbed with breakfast, crusted proof

of meals and my shock at dirty things.
But why would I have come home,

numb from intensive care, and set about
washing what she left behind?

I selected neutral colours, an array of small
things for the unknown sex of my bud,

only to creep back later and delve for the pink,
a last hopeful load. Spun dry and flapping

on a line, my longing exposed in a string
of rosy pennants, ready to hail her, wrap her tight.

REBECCA GOSS is 37 and lives in Liverpool. Her poems have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and her collection The Anatomy of Structures was published by Flambard last year. ‘Clothes’ is the fourth poem she has had selected by Mslexia. Walking the dog is conducive to her creative process; she writes for 12 hours a week, when her baby is asleep.

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