The day you said I had to
walk home alone was the
anniversary.
Do you remember it?
I told you I'd wait
(that I wanted, so much,
to wait,
that I didn't want to
walk home alone.)
But you didn't know-
How could you?
You said I'd be fine.
It makes me feel bad,
when you wait,
you told me and then
left. I faced the blue sky on my own.
The world was beautiful, that day.
(I thought about the birds and
sunshine, and how he
did it, a year back
left the world twitching
in the nervous grasping fingers of a
rope. And how it wasn't just
him that was strangled
in the outhouse but
all those who loved him,
all together with claws fast and
furious around
their necks as he
left.)

I remember him
driving us through
puddles in the car, fast
so that they splashed against the
windows (there were
floods, at the time, his house was
flooded. We thought it all a sort of
game). I remember laughing and
pressing little hands against the
windows,
on the way to buy fish fingers.

He is red-faced in most photos
-wouldn't stand out in a line-up-
(Mum screamed when she hung up the phone and
then cried, curling into herself.)

They couldn't afford the right flowers.