top of page
LISP Team

Sea Shanty by Kathy Hoyle

Flash Fiction Semi-Finalist, LISP 2nd Quarter 2020


Sea Shanty by Kathy Hoyle

My father’s back is broad and bent like a sea-coal sack.

I watch him stride along the shore, head bowed, hands plunged into pockets, the iron-grey water taunting him. I chew my hair and swallow back tears while he fades into the afternoon shadows.

My mother calls me back to the harbour wall. Her face is as white as a gull’s wing.

‘When will he be back?’ I ask

Her answer is a whisper, carried away by the North-East wind.


‘Don’t cry, bonny lass,’ my nanna says.

I curl into her nightgown, soft and musty with her unwashed scent.

‘I didn’t mean it,’ I say, pressing the bruise on my cheekbone to feel the ache.

‘Aye pet. Your Ma didn’t mean it either’.

I lay across her lap. She sings the old sea-shanty her grandmother once sang to her. I ebb into sleep on the tide of her words.

When I wake, my mother is gone.

Nanna dresses me for school. She polishes a red apple on her pinny then places it, cool and heavy, in my hand.

‘When will she be back?’ I ask

Her answer darts into the coal fire and sets alight. It burns for days until finally, it crumbles into ash and embers in the grate.

My lover stretches out a hand to pull me back to bed. I turn my back, stride naked across the room and push open the window. I breathe in the salt-tang air and rest a hip on the sill to watch the amble cobles bob on the water.

‘I have to go,’ I say, over a stone-wall shoulder.

‘When will you be back?’ he asks.

My answer soars out through the open window, billowing in the North-East wind, until it becomes lost amidst the shrieks of white-winged gulls.



253 views

2 Yorum


CBKM BOCU
CBKM BOCU
5 days ago

EPTU Machine ETPU Moulding…

EPTU Machine ETPU Moulding…

EPTU Machine ETPU Moulding…

EPTU Machine ETPU Moulding…

EPTU Machine ETPU Moulding…

EPS Machine EPS Block…

EPS Machine EPS Block…

EPS Machine EPS Block…

AEON MINING AEON MINING

AEON MINING AEON MINING

KSD Miner KSD Miner

KSD Miner KSD Miner

BCH Miner BCH Miner

BCH Miner BCH Miner

Beğen

CBKM BOCU
CBKM BOCU
5 days ago

EPTU Machine ETPU Moulding…

EPTU Machine ETPU Moulding…

EPTU Machine ETPU Moulding…

EPTU Machine ETPU Moulding…

EPTU Machine ETPU Moulding…

EPS Machine EPS Block…

EPS Machine EPS Block…

EPS Machine EPS Block…

AEON MINING AEON MINING

AEON MINING AEON MINING

KSD Miner KSD Miner

KSD Miner KSD Miner

BCH Miner BCH Miner

BCH Miner BCH Miner

Beğen
bottom of page