There in the depths of your womb, lie all the children you could have had – said the Oval Lady. They are invisible, intangible sea angels; glass squid lost in the darkening shallows. They swim in blue nightshirts with their eyes and mouths firmly closed. Sometimes when a storm breaks you can hear their fins rake across the roof tiles.

hard rain
a swollen river runs
to barren waters

An ekphrastic haibun based on Leonora Carrington’s painting ‘Green Tea’ (1942)

Alan Peat & Réka Nyitrai