‘Small Nuclear Family’ by Mel Pryor

These days I keep finding pieces of myself
lying around the house like leaves
fallen from their autumn-exhausted tree –
my swinging-out-of-bed-foot
at the foot of the stairs, my limbic system
looped over the chandelier,
eyelids curled up in a saucepan.

When I went to get fish fingers from the freezer
I found my short term memory hiding
under the planking in the garage,
a scattering of frowns inside the tumble drier.
Look at my knee in the laundry,
my hands unwristed on the kitchen floor.

From issue #1: autumn/winter 2015

About the Author
Mel Pryor has won the Essex Poetry Competition, the Ware Sonnet Prize and the 2015 Philip Larkin Poetry Prize. Her pamphlet Drawn on Water was published in 2014 and her first full collection, Small Nuclear Family, was published in October 2015 from Eyewear Publishing.