A Poem by Kathryn Bevis

You will survive

like Gloria Gaynor, spot-lit and sequinned
on the dancefloor, singing it for all she’s worth
because, as you once said, she really means it,
or like Houdini locked in stocks
by his ankles, dangling from a crane.

You will survive like small boys pulled,
thank god, from a flooded cave by Navy Seals,
like Wonder Woman, loosing her ties only
a beat before being splashed across the tracks,
or like an orca, beached and calling to its pod
from the rocky shore, returned at last to water.

You will survive like trilobites, scampering
unperturbed throughout the Paleozoic Era
or, if you prefer, you will survive as the peony
trembles on its red stem against the storm, as moss
climbs its way up each bright whip of birch,
as the last bell clings to a foxglove’s leaning spire.

You will survive as the gull flies high,
then higher over the hospital, its pale body
guiding the way to Oncology. You will survive
the burn and jangle of your nerves, the spasms
in your throat, the PICC line to your heart,
your hair in clumps upon the pillow.

You will survive the long nights where you wake
and cannot sleep again for pain. Mum, look
at everything that you’ve survived so far. Feel
how surely the world holds you now, how near.
You will survive. And when you do, I’ll be here.

Kathryn Bevis is a neurodivergent poet and poetry teacher, founder of The Writing School Online, and was Hampshire Poet in 2020–21. Her poems have appeared in: Poetry Ireland Review, Magma, Mslexia, The London Magazine, and The Interpreter’s House. In 2021, she won second place in the York Poetry Prize and her manuscript Mud and Spit was highly commended in the Mslexia Pamphlet Competition. She designs and delivers Poetry for Wellbeing courses for adults in mental health settings, substance-misuse recovery settings, and prisons. She recently headlined alongside Patience Agbabi at Winchester Poetry Festival and is currently working towards her first collection.