Elizabeth Chadwick Pywell

ritual

My sister sits at home,
a single bulb beside his bed.
She keeps the curtains closed.
I have circled the car park
fourteen times when her list arrives:
table salt, pigeon, envelope,
signature.
All four are in the sale aisle
which is not to say it is the same aisle
as when I last went hunting
or the one where we planned
our escape route
with folded jumpers up our tops,
pockets full of cherries.

I pour the salt around me in a circle
& sit cross-legged to wait for God
or anyone else to notice
but the shoppers are oblivious,
reaching through me,
fingering amalgam & tonsils
in search of bin bags or reckoning.
My tongue begins to wet.
Name & full stop safely contained,
I lick adhesive.
It tastes like the text that woke me
to say that he had died
which is not to say it isn’t delicious —
like drinking brine.

Elizabeth Chadwick Pywell was awarded the Northern Writers’ Debut Award for Poetry and a place on the Out-Spoken Press Emerging Poets Development Scheme in 2022. Her pamphlet, 'Breaking (Out)' was published by Selcouth Station Press, and ‘Unknown’ by Stairwell Press. She has featured in journals including Fourteen Poems, New Welsh Review, Shearsman Magazine, Spelt Magazine, Strix, The Alchemy Spoon, Ink Sweat and Tears and Impossible Archetype, has longlisted for the Leeds Poetry Prize and Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition, and shortlisted for the Ironbridge Festival Prize.

Elizabeth wrote the following about ‘Ritual’:

I wrote ‘Ritual’ as one of a pair of poems exploring how often we keep ourselves and each other safe with the habits, superstitions and symbols to which we assign importance. It's easy for these rituals to take on a life of their own, and gather further significance during difficult moments, blurring reality and wishfulness - or reality and horror.