NANA NIGHTINGALE - PUBLISHED BY THE CADAVERINE

Nana Nightingale Rebekah Miron

I can’t steady your hand, nor graze the frayed edges of your midnight madness. I can’t wake you from dreaming or call a cease- fire, deliver your letters nor live in your shaken daylight. In the mornings, you tremble for dawn like you’ve caught fire at the windowsill. Your tongue moves maroon & the words won’t s y n t h e s i s e; tiny fish in tide, each time I’ve tried to try to try to try and talk out loud for both of us – I never do. Instead, I recognise your grief speak in the empty shapes my mouth makes always trying its best to articulate – you have taught me a silent kind of terror.