Cwtched up in my bed in a Connecticut winter I listen to the news about Port Talbot Steelworks. It seems they are to be closed down, stealing three thousand jobs. Other facts are thrown out like breadcrumbs—the blast furnaces pump out too much muck and not enough money—the future is in recycled steel. And all that might be true but I remember the steel works at night winking in the gloom like a magical fairy village. I’d imagine Queen Mab being driven on a plume of smoke in her hazelnut coach over the bay to make mischief as we slept—birthing dreams and promising things that made the cold light of day seem less cruel. All these years later I like to believe it was Mab who whispered in my ear that even if you are from a small grey place in South Wales you could still sparkle and believe you deserve so much more.
the coldest month
I steel myself
for another change...
Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer who now lives in America. Her prose and poetry have been widely published in journals and anthologies such as Every Day Fiction, Grey Sparrow Journal, Anti Heroin Chic, Gyroscope, and Janus Lit. Adele has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for poetry and short fiction and Best of the Net for poetry. Finishing Line Press published her first poetry chapbook Turbulence in Small Places. Her second collection The Brink of Silence is available from Bottlecap Press and her novella-in-flash Wannabe was published by Alien Buddha Press in May.