A Blessed Life

More often than not Dwynwen is staring out of the window. 

It’s that catching mood, a golden dusk disappointment. 

When the light hits, haloing her coppery silvered hair, 

she hears bells tolling from beneath the murky surface 

of the sink, amongst the soapy dishes and cutlery. 

Her lover poses with a spoon, ready to stir her tea. 

But he’s melting now. He’s an icy chasm partitioning the kitchen. 

Dwynwen watches as all their tiny loves leech out, cloistering her  

by the sink. She measures the distance between them,  

the water growling like a dark argument. Dwynwen’s dog leaps  

onto a chair as the mood bleeds all over the kitchen. 

Again her gaze is diverted away from the domestic disruption. 

A tender thought leads her out over the strait to that solitary space,  

blissful as the self-requited love whispering across the dreams  

of sleeping women. But her dog’s gentle whining pulls Dwynwen  

back. The rift recedes enough that she sees the glimmers of a blessed life –  

rough seaglassed somethings softened to precious nothings.  

She turns away from the window, and the promise of the strait.  

Wades back to her lover across the kitchen. 

I have a windowfull of Eryri. Sometimes, I see them, the vast, autumn-coloured eagles, slashing the sky in half – but when I look properly, they’re only gulls, ice-coloured, a white that’s very nearly blue. And the mountains stare down at me, always watching, slowly gathering their storms.  

And I stare back.  

I realised one day, recently, that I have started enjoying the quiet little rites of looking after myself. Washing my clothes until they’re white and clean and tell no tales; scrubbing the doorstop and blackening the slate with water; washing dishes I have dirtied with food and drink, removing all traces of myself. The smell of soap instead of the smell of my own body. I have also started to yearn for a lack of things – no pretty things on the walls or flowers in a jug on the windowsill, no decoration or pattern on clothes or furniture, nothing that isn’t necessary. What comfort there is in knowing that so few things are needed! What comfort in an empty cupboard, a white sheet, the horizon stretching neatly, silently, like a line underneath the end of a story.  

Poem by Hanan Issa, National Poet of Wales | Bardd Cenedlaethol Cymru 
Prose by Manon Steffan Ros