Writer and Lancaster University PhD student Anna Godwin responds to May’s Maker theme: Untold Love Stories.

A bit about Anna:

I’m a mature PhD student at Lancaster University, in the final year of my studies in health research. My PhD is exploring the emotional support available to healthcare professionals when they’ve been involved in things going wrong for their patients. My poem is called Silence. It’s about the love I have for my severely autistic adult son (Rory), and how we understand one another without words used in the normal way. I’ve written a lot of poems over the years, but have never before sought to put them into the public domain.

‘Silence’ by Anna Godwin 

There are no words left.

Not that they have all been said.

Not that thoughts haven’t

Heard themselves

Sputtering, calling,

Catching into life.

Many are silent still,

Desperate for a voice but finding none.

Eager for the air

To breathe,

To live, to whisper

Ways ahead.

But silence speaks

Its own message, resounding,

Echoing, hurtling across the

Void, the gap.

You there. Me here.

Understanding.