Third Prize: Rebeca Carvatchi, with the poem Between a Hymn and a Ghost

Rebeca Carvatchi

Third prize - 2025 Tower Poetry Competition, 'Roots'

Between a Hymn and a Ghost

I. Before

My mother carried our name like a secret,
pressed between the pages of her passport,
its syllables curling, foreign as winter mist
on the tongue of a stranger.
She packed our country into her suitcase—
loose tea leaves, Orthodox prayers,
the scent of damp forests folded into cotton.
At night, she whispered stories of the old town,
how the river swelled in spring,
how the bells sang like old men
shaking their fists at the sky.
I tried to hold those words in my hands,
but they sifted through my fingers like flour,
dusting the kitchen in a language
I would never learn to knead.

II. Becoming

In England, my mother bought me a new name,
one that fit in their mouths without splintering.
At school, I cut my vowels to match theirs,
tongue curving sharp as a blade,
practiced swallowing my accent
until I forgot the taste of home.
They taught me their songs, their history,
made me kneel before kings I never knew.
My mother’s voice wavered at the dinner table,
half in exile, half in prayer.
She asked me to answer in her tongue,
but my words came back stilted,
like furniture arranged in a house
that no longer feels like home.

III. After

Years later, I stand at the edge of a field,
feet sunk into the wet English earth,
wondering if roots remember
where they first touched soil.
Somewhere, a river still swells in spring,
bells still argue with the wind.
I close my eyes, say my name aloud—
the real one, the one my mother gave me.
It echoes,
a sound too old for my mouth,
too new for my heart,
somewhere between a hymn
and a ghost.