Your arms
ripping at the seams,
as your pain pours into
ordered lines.
Red warning tape.
I say nothing
as each night
you add another tally
to your rising score.

I don't want to make you uncomfortable.

Silent acknowledgement
hides in the gaps between glances
as you ask me
if the short sleeves are okay.
I tell you no one will notice,
that no one will care,
as my heart rises
to the back of my throat
and your arms
blur into a wet red.

We tread together but I
can't hold your hand.
Should I say something?
Should I ask up front?
Should I look at your eyes
and confront it?
Or is that a betrayal of the
comfort in my silence.
The silence of support or
a bystander's shame?
Is it all the same?

Reaching out, a lifeline,
a baseline of decency.
You underscore every emotion
in vermillion, powered by
something only you
can deal with. When you lean on me
to root you in place I can't move.
I am helpless against you.

I hold tissues to your
fissures and figure out the best
of the worst, and test the boundaries
of where it hurts.

If I went blind,  I
know that you would
swallow bells so that
I could find my way beside
you. And if you stumbled
down to your knees, I would
pull my eyelashes out from
unseeing eyes
one by one, and press
them into your
fingertips, offering you
wishes for recovery,
one by one.

For the second time, I'm five
watching the rain pelt the ground outside,
contained behind the glass which
fogs with the heat of the kitchen.
My granny laughs at her own jokes,
leaning over the kitchen counter cutting
up vegetables into boiling water.

It's 2015, summertime, with
an afternoon sunshine
gently roasting the cheeks
of a little girl into a
healthy flush. The sweet
sanctuary of the cafe after
school; a fresh playground
amidst the summer heat.
Familiarity, an endless finality of
every poster and notice
memorised through timeless
hours, teaching her
how to read through adverts for
baby sitters
ballet instructors
late-night knitting groups.
School tie discarded, slung
over the back of a squeaky
cafe chair, the usual, she drags
her mum to the counter,
towards the fiery face smiling
behind the till. Warm eyes,
sparkling with stories and life,
already talking to her mum about
her new school teacher
the new muffin recipe
her dad's latest gig.
Her face, bronzed by foreign heat
folds as she guffaws across the cafe,
careless, laughing , at a joke
the little girl doesn't yet
understand. Handfuls
of pink marshmallows,
sweet and pure, exchange hands
with a wink and a 'don't tell your mum'.
The girl sticks two together and calls them butterflies.
The broken clock near the door
shows the same time
as it did an hour ago, hands suspended, never-ending.

I carry flowers, an expensive bunch
of lilies and roses,
tilted in towards my chest - like
a child in a green paper blanket - to protect
them against the gale as
I carry sympathy home. The rain
soaks through the paper. I nip
off a dead leaf between my forefinger
and thumb, thoughts lingering,
nose turning numb. Four years
since I spoke to Mandy, at
'Mandy's Cafe!'
whisked away by time briskly slipping.
Moving house, growing up.
And yet, when
the sun comes out later today,
I see a little girl with scooter-hit
ankles, and glitter in her hair
reaching out a tiny ink-stained hand
for a warm buttered roll
from a hand memorised
through timeless hours.

We sit on the edge of the horizon,
and dangle our legs.
hoping that
The Sun
will kiss our feet,
and introduce us to
The Moon,
who she spends forever chasing,
but will never
catch.

I still think about
those two ten year olds
in the kitchen
baking scones, in the
flour-clouded haze of that early
spring. Tucking in matching lanyards
for our secret club.

I still think about
sitting in your boyish room
and brushing blue chalk
through wavy blond, while
you showed me your favourite
football cards. You'd exhale as a laugh,
a defiant filly's huff.
Lavender oil rubbed onto our
narrow wrists beneath the
orange bands.

I still think about our
sweet innocence. The laughter
we made to deny our
growing up.

I still think about you
when we pass by each other.
Sometimes I smile. Often
I don't. An indifferent glance.
People don't believe me now
when I say we were ever
close as we were. A phantom
lavender scent lingers
at our confluence.

The transition from summer to autumn;
forgetting the dead
to pull leaves into mourning,
sweet residues.
Dead beneath the cold;
the proof of living.

The tree by the viaduct
violently fell, splintered
in late January's storm.
It had happened at night;
left to tell stories to the worms
about when the stars
waved back.

The pigeons in our garden
didn't sleep on those
stormy early-mornings.

Spring sprouts greener
grass amongst wet moss.
Splinters raise sharp fingernails
to scratch the sky; beckoning
to the heavens that try their best
to welcome the shattered trunk.

The bough lying on the ground,
yet buds bring their bright
colours into blossom to warm
the frozen pavements. A
new life - attractive pink,
romantically scattered along
its own dying bark.
Lying over the grass, ready to
return to the soil when
the last of the sweet sap dries
and the pink fades into dull brown.

But this afternoon,
blessed in cold April sunlight
the bloom of the fallen
tree seems even
brighter against green
than it would have
against a misty grey-blue.

We knew each other before.
We lay under oak trees,
scattering the sky with leaves
and rotted together into the dirt,
as the moon scattered the sky
with stars. Flying stars.
I see your face in
reflections across water,
two boughs,
one canopy,
glimmering in vibrant colours
against blue. As we lay, you grew
flowers - Peruvian lilies - from
the soil that became of your palms.
Ever the giver.

"We're going to your uncle's house first,
then we will drive to the
Cemetery afterwards."

The word  
Cemetery
hit me then like the wing of a bird
struggling to beat against stormy wind,
clinging to currents to stay airborne.

It was nothing but what I had expected.
And yet, the plainness of such a word
pulled the rug from under my black shoes,
and sent me to the ground.

The ground, that was covered in
worms and mud,
unsettled and rearranged.
Wilting flowers stuffed into the windowsill vases.

The night before, my water had boiled over
You can, and you will. This is not about what you can or can't do.
Do you really not see how selfish you are?
This is so far above you.
  
My mum takes some flowers from
on top of the casket  
before it is claimed by the soil and no longer ours.
A red rose. A thistle. Baby's breath.
They are for my granny. She cannot make it.

Later, I hang them on our kitchen wall,
turned upside down, the hidden buds.
Here, they will dry out
and last forever with faded colours.
  
The clumsy semi-circle we form
listens to verses from the Minister,
huddled under shared umbrellas  
hiding from rain, though our faces are wet.

Later, the sky will clear,
an insistent spring afternoon,
as we listen to the entirety of his song,
my grip digging into the hands at our side,  
holding on to help us let go.

It ends with laughter
on our puffy faces
the sun breaking the rain-clouds outside
because there is nothing else to do
but to do nothing.
  
The clouds leak sorrows all night
as the world grieves
because how could it not?
In the kitchen, a window
left open spits a waterfall of wind
sending cards of condolence
sweeping to the floor.   

Tomorrow, we will drive past the
closed gates of the Cemetery
on our way to the Hospital
to deliver the flowers,
immortialised in their death.