My house keys back in France.

Cross the seas to find
A use, nowhere belonging but
This door. Coming back?

Metallic smell on
Sweaty hands. What if I had
Forgotten their laughs

Et maintenant que
Faire des nuits lumière sans bruit
Attendant un signe.

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This poem was Highly Commended (Secondary) for Poetry Object 2016

Judge's Notes:
"There is a lot of movement in this short poem. The lines turn quickly, as though searching, for ‘a use’. There are brief moments touched here, of smell and touch. How the metal of your house keys has a certain smell. The poem also plays with the idea of the way keys stand in as a sign of home, the place where people laughed, that you don’t want to forget. One thing that particularly attracted me to this poem was the writer’s confident decision to use two languages – English and French – and not to try translating the French. These days, of course, we can find a translation for many languages, or an approximate one, via a quick digital search. Or is it better to think about how these ‘foreign’ words add to the poem a sense of a language that is other, or one that was once lived in, that could be forgotten due to separation, as well as setting off a memory, that is, ‘waiting for a sign’."
~ Jill Jones, Judge, Poetry Object 2016