Where new writing finds its voice
Poem

Taking Breakfast Alone

Heather Phillipson

Pass me a Digestive, darling –
if you were here you could feed the cats
and me. I’m halfway through a soft-boiled egg, 
half-full of tea, in need of something 
sweet. Every day I might come close 
to death and not know it and so I go on 
eating without urgency and releasing crumbs
like rainfall on my sheets, as if time 
won’t come to an end here in Hackney 
while you’re away. But I might drown
in bed and biscuits in the height and heat
of the day. I might slip as I run to answer 
the doorbell and it’ll be the postman’s fault 

I’m not quite fulfilled, waiting
for your postcard, or Samuel Beckett  
from an internet bookseller. Maybe I’ll recline 
in the crumbs like a river and let them
find their level around me, just as you lounge 
on sand somewhere, I expect, and listen 
to the sea. Or are you downstairs? 
I hear you slicing toast and cursing. 
But you are way up in Denver. I am deranged
with sugar. Men are cutting up the road
outside my window, swearing at the sun.