Counterfactuals
A dream of mine is somewhere
Against the tight knuckle bend of 2016
Someone is having their best year
Ever her father who was once sick
With cancer that January suddenly
Swan-dived into remission regained lost
Weight laughed with his old heaviness
Her mother started smiling with
A new warmth and she herself fell
In love in the springtime like a new world shift
One of those connections that makes you lose your footing
Every time this beautiful girl spoke
She found herself listening not for a space to add her
Own interjections but because she was the most
Interesting woman in the world they agreed
On everything or maybe not everything
But on the important things in summer they moved
In together and her sister who had spent last
Year’s leanness spitting anger and recriminations
Arrived suddenly to their housewarming
She brought a succulent as a gift called it
Another thing that can last without water
And said I’m sorry and they both melted together
And the moment wasn’t an oasis but a new beginning
At work too she was promoted it wasn’t a
Sudden thing but a culmination of many
Year’s good work the warm taste of cheap
Congratulations cake still burrowed behind
Her teeth when the phone rang her brother who
Smiled that they were finally ready to start telling
People that his wife was pregnant after
Almost a decade of trying four months along
It was going to be a little girl loved lovely
And that Christmas in her parents house there
They all were at last happy healthy and she most of
All in the mirror forever stretched out in a red
Dress like it could be full of good things
And it whispered to her that her life would be
Full of sweetness and for a moment she
Believed it believed that she was full of good
Things her new niece sleeping peaceful in her
Father’s arms everyone merry warm and content
And in that somewhere it was a perfect year
Freya Jackson is a final year English Literature student at Warwick University. Her poetry has previously been published in Arc Magazine, Matrix Magazine and The Literateur and she cannot write an interesting sounding bio to save her life.
The Kindling 