skirts billowing in the cool wind,
the view of the town behind our backs.
her red nails clutching my rings,
desperately trying to find something tangible to hold onto.
pencilled in eyebrows in a permanent furrow.

we're planting him like a seed.
taking an object of permanence from the hearth at home,
from his slippers and his housecoat
and his comfortable bed
and lying him to rest on the hill.

she's standing by his side weeping.
it's like dragging an infant from its mother.
all she wants is to take him home,
dirt encrusted red nails
placing cold feet in warm slippers.

pulling a heart from its owner.

she's holding on harder than before,
pretending that my hands are his.

the grass blows like wispy tufts of his hair
and suddenly he is everywhere
and she is being ushered to the car
arms enclosed around her
white nails, pink nails, blue nails,
a manicured shawl of all the love we can give
to protect her from the pain of goodbyes.

skirts billowing in the wind,
turning back toward the town,
re-entering a world which he no longer inhabits.

what is grief anyway?

it’s seeing the snow on the rooftops of Paris and wanting to call to tell you.
wishing you could feel the chill of the air on your cheeks,
hold the flakes in your palms and watch them melt.

you came and left as fast as falling snow.
the world stayed still, stagnant, as you slipped behind the curtains and stopped the clocks.
the cogs murmured.
that intricate system you built,
ticking time,
love growing,
gardens planted,
hands getting bigger,
hair growing longer.
how didn’t I see
your skin wrinkling,
your eyes fading.

the engineer silently smiles as he looks at a childhood he crafted.
not for himself.
for the children who called him papa.
who held his face with tiny starfish hands and sat on his shoulders.

That’s what grief is.
it’s wishing I could give you something in return to make you smile.
it’s realising how much you did for us
too late to be able to thank you for it.

there's 289 miles between me and my dad
and a phone call connecting us.

the thread of conversation stretches from the office kitchen,
through the cobbled city streets and
over the channel,
down the motorways, the carriageways
until it reaches smaller towns,
bare winter trees,
a small lake with ducks floating and birds chirping.

he's crying.
he never cries.
he never calls, not in the middle of the day.
his voice wavers in time with my shaking hands and the trembling surface of the coffee in my mug.

i'm an hour ahead but time feels frozen.
those 289 miles are melting away with every garbled sentence he utters.
the man who used to hold me on his shoulders is probably
crumpled over the kitchen table, coffee growing cold.
mine's cold now too.

he's 289 miles away from me.
i'm years away from him.
we're holding tight to a string of grief,
two ends of a tin can phone,
crying together.
and i am still his baby.
and i still have him.

his dad was 331 miles away.
now he's in the sky.
intangible.

i can hear the birds chirping.
i can hear the lake rippling.
i can hear his heart breaking.
he was someone's baby once.
the miles between us mean nothing.

he cries for his dad
and i cry for him,
cradling the phone like a newborn.