I’m Oxfam clothed and head full of henna,
he’s Age Concern dressed for less than a tenner.
Does this make us rivals or more compatible?
Anything’s possible now I’m out of hospital,
picking his path oblivious to obstacles,
catching him in an unguarded interval;
he’s too hospitable to swerve my tentacles
and I too intent on the prey.

“What’s with the titfer?” I bubble up giggly,
kissing his cheek and trying his trilby,
holding his eyes – why should I feel guilty?
If he’ll play Jesus lurking in Gethsemane
then I’ll be Judas flirting with the enemy.
Don’t say betrayal and the double agent,
I’m just a female at my play station.
He used to be nurse and I the patient,
now we negotiate new relations.

Aspiring to more of an equal footing
I’ve climbed too high and abandoned hoodies,
the dreary woollies, sackcloth and ashes,
the words that stuck to my tongue like glue.
Between heavy make-up and credit crashes
I talk too naughty and hug too warmly –
he must take his turn to be poorly,
his turn to breathe in blue.

In minutes the mood will be mellowing:
I shall saxophone and cello him
and proffer the charms of poor scarred arms,
the burnt flesh of thighs and *******,
this sin within my second-hand dress
to caress his heart and capture him.
Wind and string go enrapturing!
Pull him close to the edge of the abyss –
I want him to hang on my lips
as I’ve hung so long on his.

It fills the room and strokes each wall, a stale
and stagnant smoky pall as if the seasons
stuttered in late autumn, and time hangs still
awaiting its post-mortem. Soft moans escape
from urgent lips, the sound of silk on fingertips;
sweat congregates upon our skin and emptiness
pervades within. Tomorrow it will start again,
light tapping on the window pane; the steady hum
of early traffic  parking where these autographic
voices whisper, whine and hiss - you cannot take
much more of this. There are those who gawp  
for hours in mausoleums, become the very stuffing
of museums. Sentences both short and long
pace the space where time is hung and strung out
on a line its fingers flapping: admit defeat,
it’s to this beat your feet are tapping

A Local History Facebook Group

Does anyone know why 17 Borrowdale Road is missing?
Every day I walk past the empty space
and wonder why it’s not there.

No. 13 is missing as well but I suppose that’s just unlucky.

My husband was born at 48 in 1944.
He says there never was a property there.
The plot of land was used as an allotment,
probably to aid the war effort.

I remember a chap once told me
that before the estate was built
a property was there and underneath  
there’s a tunnel that goes to Frankley.  

My mom moved into Borrowdale Road in 1931 at 125.
She remembers an allotment and a power station.

I’ve heard about that tunnel, it goes all the way back to Cromwell’s days.
When they burnt down the house next door to the church
they hid all the treasure down the tunnel.
I live next door to where your mom lived.

I lived at 36 Norrington Road. Does anyone remember me?

I think the tunnel started at Quinney’s Farm
and went to St Leonard’s Church.
It was used by the monks to store
all their worldly possessions.

Cromwell had a lot of connections to the tunnel.
The bridle path is still in place from the farm to the church.  

About 5 years ago a well-dressed lady
knocked at  my front door.
She explained that she’d spent
her childhood in Borrowdale Road
and asked to enter my garden.
She looked around for a big oak tree,
but it was next door and they were out.
I later learnt that the well-dressed lady had passed away.
It just goes to show.

I lived at 36 Norrington Road. Does anyone remember me?

The tunnel was built in Elizabethan times.

The estate was built in the Thirties
to clear the city centre slums.

The house missing in Borrowdale Road  
lines up exactly with those missing
in Fitzroy Road, Norrington Road and Masonleys Road.  
You’ll find that the water from Elan Valley
is sent in big pipes underground to Birmingham.
That’s why it can’t be built on.

It was funded by Cadburys and Austin
to house their growing workforce.
They must have been palaces
compared to the back to backs.

So why do they miss the numbers out?

I lived at 36 Norrington Road. Does anyone remember me?

What do you think of the estate these days?  

It’s alright apart from the dog ****.

There isn’t a 36 Norrington Road.

I found that old wedding photo we lost
behind a doll in our daughter’s room.
Russian, as it happens, the doll that is -  
I can read some significance in that:  
so full of themselves, they miss the bleeding
obvious. I wiped the dust from off its surface,
made you 21 again and placed us

on the bookshelf where P meets Q.
I’d have liked it before your favourite author
but her shelf’s too close to the ground.  
All my books are still in alphabetical order;
I wake at 7 to clean and tidy,
progressing in a clockwise direction,
starting at the front door and ending in the bath.  

I compare it to my parents’ wedding picture
that’s hanging next to the dining room door:
they’d a bigger cake, more friends and relations,
dressed black and white, a formal occasion;
contemplative, no eye for the camera.  
My mother’s fuller in the face than I remember
and isn’t that an ashtray beside the cake?

I blow these pictures up out of proportion
trying to discover germs of the future:
leukaemia, cancer and emphysema
buried within a forgotten Baboushka.
How happy we appear! My Mum said never
had I looked so handsome, like Richard Gere.
Perhaps that’s the joke I’m laughing at.

Behind us I trace the faintest whisper
of the tower blocks tumbled in ‘88.
As we’re cutting the cake, your face
burns with embarrassment    
or anticipation of the sauce to come.
I can feel the grip that you have on my arm,
as if I might be the first to depart.  

When lights fade I think I can hear you breathing,
but it’s central heating or a noise in the loft.
I close the windows to keep your scent in  
and reach out to touch an amputation -
I said we shouldn’t buy a bed this wide.  
You never see pictures taken at funerals
unless somebody important has died.