Ella Walsworth-Bell
Blue
both sets of our eyes mirror the baby I lost before you, bubblegum blue ice-cream you never did like, blue blurred line on a hurried pregnancy test, blue gloves hauled you out of my womb, giving you bruises that bloomed blue as agapanthus along the shoreline of your crib, blue glows in the dark like bitter caracao, thin blue line between success and fail and some days I fail no matter what I do.
blue your eyes when you wake and stare lovingly (which is rare), blue where my fingers grab at your thick toddler arms, blue telltale feather marking out a jay, blue is the need for air, blue like that bird in Rio flying high high higher, blue-bottomed monkeys howling your diagnoses, a blue smurf head frozen numb, all of them singing the blues.
wanting you to be more like the other children standing in a neat blue line at the school gates, blue is your ringbound files on my shelf, blue: a forbidden ink in the NHS, blue the people carrier when I wanted a bike, blue is used blood returning to source, you turn the air blue, poof! clouds of ink like a squid fearing death, blue can’t change, can’t change.
our eyes a matching pale blue twinset, the blue of dream-sea matching fanciful sky, antifouling our boat with that paint getting under my fingernails and up my nose we’re dreaming of the same distant horizon and you’re riding the waves and squealing with delight and indigo woad is slathered on my soul like hot dogs with sauce I don’t really like, but it’s perfect.
Ella Walsworth-Bell
Ella Walsworth-Bell is a speech therapist living in Cornwall, who writes in between bringing up two children. She explores mental health and life in rural communities; she values a connection with the physical and natural environment. Ella created and published ‘Morvoren’ last year, a book of poems and photographs about sea swimming. She placed second in the Perito Prize 2022 for a short story about inclusion and diversity. She has secured Arts Council Funding for ‘Mordardh’, a poetry project about surfing.