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Like Snow
Fiona Larkin
The poem is like snow, living
for an instant on the tongue.
Each time is the first time:
you’re a child again,
mouth open to the play
of this brief flickering.
How can you stay the same
after that touch?
Tasted, it’s part of you.
The body holds onto
what was felt, what is gone,
all that splintered beauty,
the lyrics of a poem
recalled in their mimic fall
on the lips, on the tongue.
Fiona Larkin won the National Poetry Competition in 2024. Her debut collection, Rope of Sand, was published by Pindrop Press in 2023. The title poem was highly commended in the Forward Prizes. Her pamphlets are Vital Capacity (Broken Sleep Books, 2022) and A Dovetail of Breath (Rack Press, 2020).
