Poem of the Week: ‘To the woman sobbing into her phone on a park bench’ by Isabelle Baafi

This week, our Faber Poem of the Week is ‘To the woman sobbing into her phone on a park bench’, from Chaotic Good, Isabelle Baafi’s piercing debut about how we are made, how we get lost and how we find new selves.

To the woman sobbing into her phone on a park bench

‘You have no idea what he’s really like . . .’ – April 2020

I write the poem to forget you. To study you.
To keep you safe. Whichever you can forgive.
With a metre that mocks your palpitations,
a slant rhyme placing tomb on top of you.
Because like you I have never been as perfect
as a first-born son in his mother’s eyes. I too know
what it’s like to mop a man’s mouth with your sleeve.
I know the scabs you worry. You lie so well it becomes real,
and scorn the women who pray for a man like yours:
broad-smiled and many-faced, fork-tongued with
tangled eyebrows, steady hands. What even teeth he has.
And how exacting their bite.
He had a wisdom deep enough to stand in, and you did –
leaning on his shoulder as you stepped into your tomb.
Mangled, as only a man could make you.
No one knows it like me. How you curl into him
like a child and watch the world fall in love with his light.
How, some nights, you still wait for it to find you.
When he beckons, you approach on all fours.
When he shines on you, you scatter.

Copyright © Isabelle Baafi, 2025. Used by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd. All rights reserved.

Chaotic Good by Isabelle Baafi is out now.

Read all our poems of the week.