My body tells me that she’s filing for divorce by Kathryn Bevis

 


 

Kathryn Bevis is founder of The Writing School Online and was Hampshire Poet 2020-21. She is the Selected Poet for Magma’s Solitude issue and her poems have appeared in: Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, Poetry Ireland Review, Mslexia, and The London Magazine. In 2022, she won the Mairtín Crawford Award for Poetry, the Poetry Society Member’s Competition, and the Second Light Poetry Competition (first and second prize); coming second in the York Poetry Prize and the Edward Cawston Thomas Prize. Kathryn teaches Poetry for Wellbeing courses in mental health and substance-misuse recovery settings, and prisons. She’s working towards her first collection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She’s taken a good, hard look at the state

of our relationship. She knows it’s not

for her. The worst thing is, she doesn’t tell

me this straight up or even to my face. No.

She books us appointments with specialists

in strip-lit rooms. They peer at us over paper

masks with eyes whose kindness I can’t bear.

 

They speak of our marriage in images:

a pint of milk that’s on the turn, an egg

whose yolk is punctured, leaking through

the rest, a tree whose one, rotten root

is poisoning the leaves. I try to understand

how much of us is sick. I want to know

what they can do to put us right. She,

 

whose soft shape I have lain with every night,

who’s roamed with me in rooky woods, round

rocky heads. She, who’s witnessed the rain

pattering on the reedbed, the cut-glass chitter

of long-tailed tits, the woodpecker rehearsing

her single, high syllable. How have we become

this bitter pill whose name I can’t pronounce?

 

Soon, she’ll sleep in a bed that isn’t mine.

That’s why, these nights, we perform our trial

separations. She, buried in blankets, eyelids

flickering fast. Me, up there on, no — wait —

through the ceiling, attic, roof. I’m flying, crying,

looking down. Too soon, I whisper to her warm

and sleeping form. Not yet. Too soon. Too soon.

 

 

Kathryn Bevis

 

Kathryn’s debut pamphlet ‘Flamingo’ is available from Seren. Details below.

   

Flamingo – an interview with Kathryn Bevis

A Wedding by Kathryn Bevis

A Vision by Kathryn Bevis

Devil Day by Kathryn Bevis

Gilbert White Poetry Event

Poems

 

 

 

 

 

Flamingo

 

 

is available to purchase from Kathryn’s publisher, Seren, who you can find by clicking on the cover below.