Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume One Nov-Dec 2026.
Abandonment, poem Siobhan Harvey.
Abandonment
A door closes on your return. Child no more;
but stranger. Not what your parents wanted,
but what they had to do, for the neighbours
are watching as well as their suggestible kids.
An audience to witness this rejection is needed
so your lonely parents can hold their heads high,
look their neighbours in the eye; no shame. Yes,
an audience to witness this rejection is needed
to remind the children what will happen to them
if they come out to their parents. It’s community:
family values; morality; tradition. The same path
as led you here, awaits your exodus. Case closed
at your feet; what does it hold, but an emptiness.
It’s set, like you, before a house no longer home.
You can carry it with you, unpack it elsewhere,
but where does it leave you? The things it holds
are as ephemeral as the darkness enfolding you,
the cold winter night closing its curtains to you
who’s dressed lightly now a revelation is made.
So abandon it at the door, like a festive wreath
hanging there; yes, abandon all. Tear the ghost
streets of the town from your body as you rip
towards the last train, last thing out of there,
until nothing else remains but this: a shadow
cast by your skin; closer than anyone, anything,
the memory of this abandonment, your new kin.
© Siobhan Harvey
Siobhan Harvey is the author of nine books, including the memoir, What We Remember, What We Forget (2026) and Ghosts (OUP, 2021). She was awarded 2025 Memoir Prize for Books (US) – Category winner, 2023 Landfall Essay Prize (NZ) 2019 Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems and 2019 Robert Burns Poetry Prize, as well as being highly commended in 2024 Bridport Memoir Award (UK). Currently she is shortlisted for the international 2026 Heroine Women’s Writing Prize (Poetry).