I saw life jackets left on the beach
Kos, Summer 2015

Emma Lee

I asked the waiter, but he shrugged.
Later he loaded crates into the manager’s car.
She looked dead on her feet, said something
about an extra sitting at dinner.
But there weren’t any new guests.
It was my two weeks in the sun.
I’d eaten nothing but lettuce
for weeks to look OK in my bikini.

The waiter stopped flirting, went quiet.
I followed him to the derelict hotel where tents
had sprung up like mushrooms overnight.
He didn’t want to talk. I didn’t push it.
You learn that at a call centre. Some people
think you’re a machine and they just poke buttons.
Others, you’re the only person they’ve talked to all day.
I’d only come to sunbathe so helping
give out food didn’t seem much.

One mother told me men drifted around
and she didn’t think her daughters were safe.
After their journey, they didn’t want confinement
to a crowded room. I became a chaperone.
I taught them hopscotch on the beach.
Their laughter such a strange sound.
I hope it helped. I bought them sanitary pads.
People don’t think about that: their bodies
capable of creating life. They could only wait.

Paperwork’s slow at the best of times.
I left my euros for the hotel to pass on.
Life changing. Easy to say but it was.

Emma Lee’s most recent collection, Ghosts in the Desert, is from Indigo Dreams. She blogs here and reviews for London Grip and the Journal. Emma is on the editorial panel for an East Midlands-based crowdfunded anthology Poems for People: poetry in solidarity with refugees to raise funds for registered charities working with refugees.

Well Versed is edited by Jody Porter. Please include a short, third-person biography and author photo with all submissions: wveditor@gmail.com

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