Tess Jolly

In Sara’s house  

I live by Sara’s instruction. If I complete  
each task successfully, I’m rewarded 
with a more complex chain of commands:  

blood sealed in its casket, Sara orders me  
to lock my voice in its box, tack 
my skin to my bones. When mice creep   

from the skirting, she tells me to coax  
them with crumbs from my hoard 
into the stoning. Delilah begs me to stop,  

although she knows I can’t. Delilah is here  
so I am not the smallest, so that I have
something to care for. She chatters incessantly  

about the things Sara keeps in the loft: 
swivel chair, sewing machine, an assortment 
of rings and my shadow crossing the walls  

as I line matchbox beds into rows, roll dough  
into worry beads. Warming the milk,  
Sara makes me peel the backs of Delilah’s   

hands to sticky maps and wrap the plastic  
round the nightlight’s bulb, then all
the cells in Sara’s house blossom into light,  

beguiling the children she knows are watching  
from the woods where I once huddled. 
Delilah’s lids click in her skull as she cries   

real tears, and Sara’s excuses rattle up 
through my throat in answer to the horrified  
whispers, the perfumes of burning.    

Tess Jolly has published two pamphlets: Touchpapers (Eyewear) and Thus the Blue Hour Comes (Indigo Dreams). Her first full collection, Breakfast at the Origami Café, is published by Blue Diode Press. She lives on the South Coast of England with her family, and works as a library assistant and a freelance proofreader and copyeditor. She also runs creative writing workshops for children and young people. www.poemsandproofs.co.uk