How to Use a Teaspoon to Save Your Life
She likes to sit in the corners of restaurants
So she’s never surprised
The wall always at her back
And the glistening cutlery laying like a choice
On the cool white cloth
Once there were few choices
In her little life
So she took a teaspoon
And put in in her knickers
The cold steel a reminder
Of the metal of her father’s smile
When on her fourteenth birthday
He told her she was leaving
Flying from her home
To a Home she’d never known
To marry a man she’d never met
At the airport the detectors sang out
The scream of protest she could not
And as she was taken behind the screens
She looked back at her mother
Bent over like a willow
And knew she had made the right choice
But she was the lucky one…
Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer who swapped the valleys for the American East Coast. You can find some of her poetry and prose in Grey Sparrow Journal, Anti Heroin Chic, Gyroscope, and Janus Lit, among others.She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net for her poetry.
The Marbled Sigh 