If I ever die at the side of the eastern road,
Where the broken bumpers and crisp packets collect,
Where the snow is shovelled into grey slush streams,
Please don’t buy the garish posie from the petrol station,
Don’t buy my memory a card factory teddy bear,
Leave the cards’ platitudes and poems on the shelves at Clinton’s,
Leave the lamp posts and road signs alone,
Pack up your sympathy, take it all home to your mums house.
Remember me as the girl that made you laugh,
Unpack your tears if you have them and give them to your pillow,
Give them to Facebook if you must, or give them to your friends.
I promise I’d do the same for you,
Unless you’d rather be remembered by straggling tinsel clinging to a lamp post by one piece of damp, desperate sellotape.
By wilting white roses dropping sad brown petals onto chewing gum tainted tarmac.
Unless you’d like to be known as the man whose name is scrawled in biro inside of a cheap card blutacked onto the sign for the Havant bypass.
In which case I’ll drag my sympathy to Clinton’s, to card factory and my closest petrol station.
I’ll say goodbye to the tune of sirens and rattling sainsburys lorries.
Then cry alone each time I drive past your withering memorial and try to remember to clean it up next week.