Fault Line

If you look really closely at me
you’ll see the seam;

there are things needed to make a world:

vinyl records
icebergs
telescopes
short crust pastry
maps
retractable pencils
silver birches
kissing with tongues
ships in bottles
ibuprofen
rock-n-roll
blue whales
handwritten letters
denim
naked dancing
small garden birds
paints
dishwashers

-but these things camouflage
the crack brilliantly.

You could believe
there had never been
that late summer morning
in Chalmers Street, Edinburgh,
when the lady came in
and removed swaddled-me
from your arms.

Christine Marshall is in her first year of the Creative and Life Writing MA, she writes poems and memoir about longing, family and romance. Rock n roll references often creep in. She studied fine art and lives in London.