In the dark corridor
          I hear women
                singing in
                  pitches and tones
                        all their own
feeling their way through shadows
                       through the music
                        of epidurals
                             in this dissonance
I hear my dead mother’s melody
             soft from my daughter’s lips
                            its waves unravelling their DNA
                                       on our hospital walls
                                                              with interlocking shapes
                                                                         of crowning concertos
                                       Oh    what else can unzip
                                                                 the pain          of stretching skin
                                                                                  into pure song?

Kathleen Strafford is a student at Trinity University in Leeds studying for her MA  in creative writing.  She hopes her first collection of poetry will be published this coming year after graduation.  She has been published in magazines & online:  Interpreter’s House, Butcher’s Dog, Fat Damsel, Ink Sweat and Tears, Panoply, and various anthologies.