You're the one who suggested
the park picnic, obviously. We got the food
from the M&S at King's Cross after you’d arrived,
wearing the bracelet I'd bought you
for your thirtieth half a year ago.
You really didn't have to. I knew that,
but did anyway. Happy tears flashed
in your eyes. In mine too.

Although we both know, we ask
how we've been. Much the same as always.
Work colleagues fancy a drink
on Fridays - it's a pass. Skin’s breaking out
again - it's hormonal. Turns out we're both
reading Emily Henry because everyone else is.
Falling into line with the masses.
Bookish FOMO, you say. I emit a giggle at that.

A group of others play football nearby;
tote bags for goalposts. I doubt a wayward kick
but I move the share bag of cheese
and onion closer to my crossed legs.
I almost don't hear you ask really better now,
I worry you know. I know you do but again,
my throat becomes clogged. I never tell.
The light licks your shoulders and I think of drinking
the sun one day without rosy blotches
on my skin, heartburn on the hour, every hour.

Half-mouldy stalks, some hunchbacked.
Graveyard of street lights with blown lamps
or yellows, faded, fizzing into expiry.
That is all for the year. It is over now.

Bramblings navigate the snow-drenched fallen.
Have they known the illuminations?
Scuttling, inquisitive with seeds in mouths,
alive between scrawny, spent matches.

I'm thinking of the sea.
I think we both said it was the clearest
blue we'd ever seen. OK, where you're from is lovely
and I know the place quite well now but
April’s are generally grim though not
where we were in that month, that year.
It was only my second time on a plane
and as it was a cheap deal we both said go on then,
let’s do it, and we did. You turned twenty-two
that week. Wore red and sang the song (poorly).
We found tasteless cupcakes from the ugly
supermarket down the road.
Laughed at how silly it was. No candles. The owner’s
tabby cat for company. You went in the sea again
the next day. I can remember the way it clung
to you, dripped off from you like little jewels.
I think I was close to being in love then. Yuck.
A painless vaccine but you know it's happened.
Strange, I suppose, how the smallest thing
makes you realise the massive. I knew it for sure
when you looked at me, handing over
a second two Euro lemonade of the morning.
The clearest blue, the sea
in your eyes. Every time.

You've got yourself a cold one from the fridge when I call.
It's April again and the clocks changed again
didn't they and I haven't heard from them
in months now. I think they're all caught up
in their own personal knots or weeds as the time’s gone, going,
that hour away to the clouds. Those I knew I wouldn't know
now in Marks and Spencer, the multi-storey. Any memories
like puddles, warped. They, too, going to the clouds. It's lighter
in the evenings but much is the same; the chickens
with their sore throats, cheers from a distant football pitch. Something
is different though. Indefinable. Condensation on a window.
I agree, you say, as I hear your wife's muffled
voice in the background.

now it’s camaraderie down
the plughole dry pint glasses
and an unstabbed dartboard

as this Parthenon of chalk dust
played host to its last epic
clash of the amateurs

baize blessed for the final time
many-houred conflict of breakoffs
and ***** shots

a throng of fortunate bespectacled
punters quiet for the final frame
all back and forth

‘til two unknowns outside of town
shook hands proclaimed a draw
MORE the crowd cried

playtime was over but they’ll always
remember this tussle for the title
in the multi-tabled hall that sleeps

where an angry scarlet sign
on the entrance doors bellows
NO ENTRY to the memories held within

abandoned soles
floppy dog tongues
yellowed by the sun

limbs of the limbless
sprouting scarecrow
or roadside Nike angel

many miles worn
left to be laceless
twins made orphans

or just one
dusty rubber
where nobody's home

washed clean
for the premiere of another
year plus one

will the voices now
untangle when the tide
brushes them in

swimming through seasons
effervescent
a new glow you emit

and you tick and you tick
cast a new sunrise
into ****** waters