Hannah Linden – Under the Weather

Again, the well of quiet opens. Every

depth of me is water and the hum

of molecules realigned to the task

of recovery. I could drown here

in my own sea. Threads of childhood

sew their isolations into my blubber.

There were lessons I learnt

in a dark room about how

to sit in the middle of pain.

If I am a swimmer, some part

of me is always floating a current

in the lull before forward motion.

There is peace here, in the moments

that I feel the sympathetic resonances

of cliffs, ocean, the reflection of the sky.

Hannah Linden, is a neurodivergent, bi poet from a northern working-class background but now lives in ramshackle social housing in Devon, UK. She is published, won the Cafe Writers Poetry Competition 2021, was Highly Commended, Wales Poetry Award 2021 and is shortlisted for the Leeds Peace Poetry Prize 2024. Her debut pamphlet, The Beautiful Open Sky (V. Press), was shortlisted for the Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet 2023. X: @hannahl1n