The most hopeless aspect of this war
is that it can never finally be over
a kind of mother
you come out of the bus station
I was probably born there, I wonder
were we this alike when I was a baby
your trembling voice says thank you
you touch my cheek with your fingertips
hissing brakes, diesel rainbow fumes
the spectral fades away from inky puddles
in the mildest words we can find
we fight for a resting place, endless
validation, verification, justification
two strangers at war with corporeal reality
as we cannot save each other
we are out to save ourselves
by any means going, lies, truth
our postures never quite differentiated.
Rosalie Alston has poems published in Spelt magazine, Black Lives Matter: Poems for a New World (CivicLeicester, 2020), Voices Along the Road, for child refugees (2018) and in
adoption anthologies. She has poems published online by the Poetry Village, Poetry Kit and PoetryandCovid. Her poem “Moving foster home again, yet I am not dead” was Highly Commended in the Poetry Space Competition 2020.
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