Inheritance

The Lifeboat: All night in his lifeboat my father sang to keep the voices of the other men who cried in the wreckage from reaching him, he sang what he knew of the requiem, of the hit parade and the bits of hymns, he sang until he would never sing again, scalding his raw throat with sea-water until his ribs heaved, until the salt wept from his eyes on dry land, flecked at his lips in his squalling rages, streaked the sheets in his night sweats as night after night the reassembled ship scattered its parts on the shore of his bed, and the lifeboat eased him out again to drown each night among singing men. Inspired by a shipwreck endured by her father during the Second World War, and by his struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder and eventual suicide,