Still-Life Ask her what she thinks as she conceals her baby in fallen leaves and detritus. Still-born, still-life. All that waiting, all that love unanswered. So many clouds with dark underbellies.

One of my earliest pieces, "First Sentence," was written when I was eighteen, in the long shadow of the abuse I endured at the hands of a controlling narcissist. It has passed through many iterations over the years—including one version published in Best of the Manchester Poets, a rendition I would now gladly disown. The version that follows is, I think, the truest and most fully realised form of the poem, and I now regard it as the definitive text. First Sentence I cannot