Shook

Remember that time I came to you in casualty?

You’d had a seizure on the taxi cab floor

That was the last time I came to support you.

Then you supported me

at her funeral.

After that, we were done.

Remember you looked surprised to see me there?

Like I wouldn’t come.

Like I wouldn’t have run

to see if you were ok.

You couldn’t even remember passing out.

I was in bed when your friend called

I didn’t hear right,

Just went into panic and action

Forgot Uber existed

Got a black cab.

Sixty quid. I still resent that.

After eight years, it was like we were married

but we never were.

Later, I realised why.

Remember that student nurse?

She fucked up taking your blood

Your heart was racing

Like it had so many nights before

For different reasons.

I joked with you and calmed you down.

Remember that Asian doctor – how young he looked?

But it wasn’t him, young

It was us, old.

Was this a wake up call?

A sign?

Did it start to change your mind?

I remember

your clothes on the chair

you in a hospital gown – like Rick

Wires going in

Wires coming out of your skin.

Ok, I nicked that part.

You probably don’t remember

That I was wearing my fluffy jumper

with the lovehearts on.

I don’t wear it anymore.

We were so tired when we got out.

5am on those cold leather seats

Magic on the radio

Magic tree on the mirror.

Thank God. Relief.

We held hands.

We got home.

Now it’s just my home.

I still remember climbing into bed that morning.

I sometimes wonder,

did something in your brain change then?

Maybe that’s why everything got ruined

Maybe it wasn’t your fault

Or mine.

It’s easier if I tell myself

It wasn’t your fault

Or mine

It was just your brain

shaking

It was just that your brain got shook

Like your body shook after

Like everything shook after.

It’s still shaking.

A year has turned into two.

I’m still shaking.

Are you?




_______________

Japanese keyboard

If we scroll back far enough,

Can we be OK again?

Back among the lovehearts and lips. 

💋💗💋💗💋💗💋💗💋💗💋💗

Your voice before we met

Your voice inside my head

Emotions

Emoticons

But now you’re gone.

💀💀💀

_________________________

Box set

I haven't watched a film for six months.

I keep saving up things for us to watch

But I can't face them alone

I can't face outside alone

Our private jokes without a home.

You'll never know

if Glenn dies under the dumpster

(he didn't, but...)

You'll never get to see crappy season 7

to find out if Negan is scary.

Well, spoiler alert, he's not.

You never got to finish your book.

Just kidding, you never read a book

You could barely finish a magazine in the loo

Without soaking it through

with the shower head and the curtain

not pulled over quite right.

I miss your soggy magazines

Complaining about overuse of shower gel

Complaining about things I would kill or die to have again

It felt like nothing at the time

But it was a life.

It was right.

Now I'm soaking everything through

And not in a good way.

And our cat on the landing gone, too

And my heart: dead, like the pair of you

Now all that's left is cat hair, crumbs and

Silence

I'm still waiting for the next bit to start.

When’s it gonna start?




_____

Obsolete

What’s worse than knowing I’m dying?

Knowing the dog will outlive me.

 

I can’t even walk him today

But in a month’s time

or a year’s time

you and he will go walkies and play

you’ll call to him,

call out his name

and I’ll still be dead.

 

The dog will sleep in your bed

Alive

The dog will lie in your arms

Alive

 

But at least I know the dog.

 

One day,

even that dog will be dead;

the dog that outlived me.

 

He’ll be buried in the garden

and you’ll be alive

still

breathing and laughing

with someone I’ve never even met.

 

 

__________

 

Next door

I will remember you

The way you collected things

like I collect things

The cards and the memories

The religious keepsakes

Except you believed.

I’d always buy you angels.

A month ago, I found one I forgot to send at Christmas.

Next Christmas, I’d thought.

Every Easter,

Looking for a card with meaning

As I knew it meant something to you

And you meant something to me.

Do you remember all the times you helped me move house?

Carrying lampshades and cushions

With your packed lunch

and your Special Brew

You’d always ask for a posh glass.

Lost again with mum on the way home.

Another tale to tell.

Before that, were summers stretched out like decades

Crisps in the cupboard in your dining room

Cutting the grass in your garden

Your son was a brother to my brothers.

I remember you in bright purple

your clip on earrings

with glasses before your surgery.

That was classic Margaret.

I remember your sense of humour

How fucking blunt you were.

You knew your own mind

You were strong and kind

With no time for self-pity.

Your husband was killed the year I was born.

He has been dead as long as I’ve been alive.

I must have reminded you.

Did you know that you took us in on the worst day of my life?

You were there for me

For us

For my whole family.

You never cared who was right or wrong

You never took a side

You were the last person on earth

We all liked.

I’ll drive your car, now mine, to your funeral.

Still with the Virgin Mary on the dashboard

Still with St Christopher tied to the lighter.

And me
who has never believed in anything

I hope you got there.

__________________

Lunch

Before…

his pupils were massive

as he knelt between

my legs,

As we said

‘no we shouldn’t’

but of course, we did.

Afterwards,

he looked like

he’d just been told

someone had died.

He looked like a victim.

Or was that me? 

Back to the old house

I am transported there
My heart and head
Is where my home is
Nothing has changed, everything has changed.
The shops shrunken and shabby and stuck
I have moved on but they remained forever
The kids on the street meaner, nastier, stupider
Or am I just getting older?
And those words
That spelt the name of the street
That I lived in for eighteen years
Once as important as my own name
Now unfamiliar.
I walk walk walked
Past the dead end alley
And the berries crushed
into the ground like brains
As a child
I tried to avoid them
But now
The street is a photograph
And I am a giant
So I step and step and step.
Finally I reach you
My heart, my mother, my father,
My brothers and lost best friends.
Home.
It could have been then
The cat skitters by
Crying, left behind.
It feels like you were my lover.
Behind my doors and windows
A new family lived
The plaque, ‘Roseland’, prised from the wall
I see me within you
Ghosts
My dad throwing my mum out of the door
My brother punching a hole in the wall
I lost my first tooth
My glasses, my braces
My virginity
And my mother between these walls.
Inside
We were still inside
The five of us inside
The golden lion knocker on the door
I remember a time
When I wasn’t allowed to cross this road
Was I ever that small?



_______________

Threesome

You should listen to your cat

when you get home tonight

as it follows you

to the kitchen

as it followed us

up the stairs.

It will watch you squeeze out

food from a pouch

Impassive.

Like it watched us

fuck on your bed

Impassive.

Your cat keeps my secret.

Afterwards

I used your perfume

your brush and

your shower.

I stroked your cat and he purred.

I want that cat to

tell you

what it knows.

I will make it talk.

Verdana

Nights we spent spewing words

Trying to impress

You were my Verdana

before we even met.


 

Studio

My new life

without you

makes me wonder

what the old life was for?

why I hung around

in the face of such wrongness

when it was so easy to leave

it took a month

in the end

and I was gone.

I don’t think of you now

but if I stay up all night

sometimes it hurts

not because I miss you

but because 
yet another 
bit of my life

is done.

Barking

I didn’t realise how many words

There were for crazy

Until you went there.

Loco, nuts, bonkers, mad

They all sound like a joke –

but what you did was

Horror

not comedy.

I thought of asking your sister

to take you the new

Bright Eyes CD

But god knows if you still like them

or who you are right now.

Is your real self; your real mind

hiding somewhere?

Can we unearth you?

It feels like you’re dead.

Instead

you’re just out to lunch.

Excerpt/ Reflection

You were part of my history

a sticker on a timeline

forever seventeen

drenched in mythology

Ten years later

developed and dated

thawed out and dreamless

Your ageing ages me.

You reside

inside my head

in a box

with all the others.

I’ll take you out and

glorify you periodically

but only if you stay

confined and asleep.

And don’t forget:

the story is all mine

What you remember different;

didn’t happen.

You weren’t meant

to turn out like this,

and I’m ashamed

because neither was I.

___________________________________

Prize

The inflatable flower

that you won for me

the night we met

still sits on the floor in the bedroom

filled with air from your lungs

How can that thin red plastic

hold you – even now

eight years on

and six months since

your breath ran out

forever.

Today I cracked

and finally pried

the stopper open

I sucked you up

and breathed for the both of us

Afterwards, the flower lay

crippled on the floor

and I wished I'd waited

another day, another month

another year.

________________

Extol

I was wrong

before

about falling in

love being about

me

It’s not.

And fitting together

Is one thing

But I’ve never ‘not’

fitted

with a lover.

All people fit

If you hammer hard

enough.

So love isn’t that,

either.

Our love is about

light up deities,

pop gods

and seasides.

And how you came

from space to save

me,

did you know that?

  

The story is

upside-down

from the way you

tell it.

___________________________________

Horror film

On my knees

at your feet

with the light

from the camera

in my face

I felt wild.

Watching it back

felt like watching

childbirth

or a car crash.

_____________________

Gulls

Two years

we kept

two stones

as we stitched

and laced our dream.

Two stones from

Brighton beach.

We pictured

drives along the coast,

healthy living

and a little life

waiting for us

when we got back home.

We got salt,

that much we got.

We filled up buckets

but not with our hands.

Now we ride back to London

Not defeated.

I can still see us

sitting in deckchairs

I can still see the sea from here.

_____________________

Better off

After you beat her

(not straight after,

but soon after)

My mum left

me with you.

She repeated

like a prayer

how you would never

hurt me

Never lay a finger on me.

I was safe with you.

And I was.

Each month

I would call her

hysterical

over some

act of non-violence.

A door torn off

A smashed TV

My brothers

fighting,

but not play fighting:

one throwing the other

down the stairs

one (the same one)

hitting the other with a

baseball bat.

And my dad,

Well, he did his best

Gave me money for the chip shop

and told me mum

loved her new family

better

that she had new children now.

______________________

You are my nicotine patch dream

You came via electro mail

And gave

the crushing drudge

of twenty four

after twenty four

after twenty four

some punctuation.

Before you

I was

chasing a hearto

mainlining sweets

of both kinds

Now,

I’m still part

slow motion suicide          

But laughing

Let’s cuckold old age

Who wants to live in bungalows

via panic buttons

anyway.

Marks

Two little bruises

give you away

one on my right wrist

one on my left.

Imprints of your thumbs

as you held me

like I was the only thing

keeping you afloat.

Now just smudges,

like newspaper print

but the stain of you

lingers.

I touch them

to remind myself

for one moment

I was needed.

Now I watch them

yellow

into the pink of my skin

like leaves

rotten.

Death wish

Sometimes

I wish

I was terminally ill

so I could quit work

forever,

guilt-free.

We could sit

on the bed and

play board games

and you’d make my dinner

for me.

And when you weren’t here

I could read magazines,

write a diary

and watch trash TV.

And you’d have to be nice,

if you liked it or not

Whatever I said,

You’d agree.

____________________