Faux-smiles in the crush of
Urban escapes through cans of
Cider,
Kings and queens-

You left me behind, and I know you
Owe me nothing, but that doesn't
Undo this hurt.

well i'm glad you didn't promise,
and i know now why you said
that you hated vowing to keep your word
and could we just instead-

know about this quiet agreement
in the shadows of our mind
because then, you never broke a vow-
least, not the spoken kind.

if i were to turn and say
hey dude i ******* hate you, kay?
(well no, of course it isn't true-)
but what d'you reckon you would do?
i'm only wondering because
you act like it'd be no loss
and insecurely, i don't know-
because you sometimes seem as though
either you think i'll never leave
or just don't care what i believe?
i'd like to say i have a line
but no, i'll just sit here and whine
while you sit there, knowing quite well
that i would never ever tell
you that i'm giving up, you see
i think that this means more to me
than you, perhaps, and **** that stings
especially recently, when things
have led your life away from mine
i know it's not your fault; it's fine-
except it's not, because i never
thought that i would have to weather
all my ugly parts alone,
you used to be just down the phone.
i never used to hide from you
and now it seems you want me to-
but i've spent years with my gun down
it's hard to pick it off the ground.

*-maybe i'll close my eyes instead
and un-remember what you said.

You and I were
explorers of the first degree-
I was the leader but it was never as
fun without you, you know-
you were essential too.

We dammed streams and
built castles, drew maps and
hid in ferns
taller than our heads.

I named our places but
only for you (we spoke in
code; spies and pirates,
explorers of the first degree).

We had Greendip,
The Bracken Bubble,
Glory Glee with the ash tree
(your branch, and my branch,
and the Nasty Nipping Nettle Nasties
that we drew red – danger – on the map.)

We slid down hills on plastic
bags and ran up them with
matching hair tangling in
the wind and
I was the leader,
but you were my crew.

Your hair still matches mine
and although we no longer draw
maps on paper we are drawing one
every day (and when I see any
Nasty Nipping Nettle Nasties,
I mark them in red for you,
and you do the same for me).

I am no longer the leader (we’re
equals now, matching pioneers,
and I love you).

today a small shadow
flew out of your mouth
and took up
the space where
some light should’ve been

and i know it’s unfair
that i sometimes compare
black to white with
no space for the
grey in-between

but it fell cold and ugly
and made me feel weird
like i knew i was scared but
knew not what i feared

till the sun came back out
and the hole shivered shut
and the fear crept away
to the pit of my gut

and i don’t know if you thought what you said was true
but it felt like it came from a stranger, not you.

you cannot stop staring
(he's only your mate)
-yes i've noticed the way
you've been looking of late-

like you want to enquire if
i'm at all aware
of the way the sun looks
in the threads of his hair,

like you're guilty and
he's taken you by surprise,
like the world's pushed you
forwards and
opened your eyes,

like you're scared of the
truth and you're scared of the
rest, and you're thinking that maybe
it's only a test.

but the fact that it's not is as
clear as cut glass (well tell that
to the woman who says it'll pass)

i watch your eyes watch him-
and you look at me- like you're
wondering whether i know
what you see.

it's hard not to bump into ghosts in
your house. you've been here
fifty years, or more, and there's
time caught in the marigold
wallpaper; minutes stuck between the
pages of the books you keep
but never read.

you're the unwilling curator
of your own museum-
you have stacks and stacks of
gardener's weekly,
- could build a fort out of them -
but instead sit in the middle looking
lost. you ask after people who've been
dead years, and perhaps it's because you've
seen them in the mirror.

(outside is the tree your
husband planted in the 60s,
spliced out of two and thus
unique. you stare at it sometimes,
and maybe you're wishing for
something-
or maybe it's just out of
habit).

it's come again,
just in time for christmas-
bitter weight that makes you want to scream
(you feel strangled by violin chords,
the sun burns but clouds stick in you
throat and choke you- you are
safest in the dark).

block out the stars, God please don't
let them in- they're acid on your eyelids
and they hurt

oh- this nameless monster.
they say it doesn't exist but then what
is this within you, all blunt fangs and
hoovering up your insides
(you're a walking vacuum,
about to collapse in on yourself,
and nobody can see).

They stay up late
And complicate
The things they learnt at school,
They stab their shadows
In the dark
It's cunning and it's cruel.
They drink to sway
(It's all okay),
Their mouths taste sour and frightened-
It's all alright,
"the future's bright!"
This place has them enlightened.

sometimes I am
overwhelmed by words-
the countless human voices
shouting to be heard. and then they
ask you what you love, and
what you read- and you must
scrabble for the words they
want and need. but all the
great ideas are blurry in your
mind - what really sticks are
those old friends you left behind
amongst the cushions and the
trees you knew when smaller-
the battered books familiar:
easy smiling caller
who knows the way into
your mind so very well, that you
don't have to put your thoughts to
show-and-tell. and all the places
in those stories feel like
home- they are the sea, and
all these new books seem just foam.

oh you are rather stupid sometimes
(you know that) but that
doesn't stop you being
amazing.

i could write poetry on the subject
( i am writing poetry on the subject)
you draw perfection in the
wrong shape,
sing it in the
wrong key-
but
it is still
perfect.

You are a study in

contradiction,

(Filofax looks and

roller coaster smile.)



You've patience short

as a fireman's hosepipe,

eyes that you

narrow like the Nile.



You walk like you're dancing

at the Pope's wedding;

talk like you haven't

got the time to stop.



You're always grinning

when it's raining

(down from the bottom

and up from the top).



You mock like a bat

but you're scared of darkness-

scared of losing

your own two feet.



Your misplaced faith

In your own self-loathing

lurks in the sun

taking pride in defeat.

She sits on the bottom step but
one with water-wrinkled fingers and
a ring clutched in her hand. Her eyes
spill silently, noiseless rivers down the
seams of her face (she's coming undone, now,
he's gone and she's coming undone).

You take the blue out of the sky-
I try to stop it draining but you've
stolen the plug and it whirls away from me,
through the desperate fumbling of my fingers,
Unstoppable.
And when you're finished there is
only grey, empty and heavy and
smothering,
The mocking tidelines on a bathtub,
a vague confusion and
incredulous ache-
the echo of a cloudless colour.

They hold hands and
take turns being outwardly sad,
cry in separate cars on the
way to work, eyes always
sore and checking in the
wing-mirror-
The house is too quiet for
them so they have the TV
constantly on in the
kitchen but it's
nothing like the sounds they're
missing.
Sometimes she drives to the
pre-school and stares in feeling so very
empty and sometimes he
sees her there

(so he turns round and leaves-
they don't speak of it at dinner).

Let's waste time
spinning stitches in the
panic of our minds and
throwing light into the
ever-present dark *and
thinking everything we do
is somehow art.

you tell me that you're very sad
i cannot help; it makes me mad
that i can't take the pain away
(i scrabble for the words to say)

i sit and hear you talk to me
and wish that you could only see
the things i'd do to make you smile
(and when you've gone, i sit awhile

and cry. because i'm sad as well
but know it would be wrong to tell
when you are fighting with the grey)
i so want you to be okay.

they say that when one door closes,
another opens. and i've always been-
professed to be- an optimist.
(i'm not an optimist. i'm really
not an optimist at all).
the thing is at the moment that doors seem to
be closing and with every clang shut the room gets
darker and it's harder to see, i guess,
to see where those open doors might be
(or if they even are at all,
says a bitter voice in the back of my
mind because self-pity is a thing that
often camps out in my
head right next to the "NO CAMPING"
sign). and i seem to be losing my
grip of things and they keep falling from my
fingers and i hardly notice till i look down at my
hands and see they're gone (and that's when i
scrabble around in the dark looking for them,
looking and looking and looking because i
hate losing things, i can't just-
i can't just lose them)

(except that apparently i can.)

you caught the tide and
i didn't. swept under and
tangled in the dark
it's hard to see but i
know, i know you're gone.
there's only empty black waves
above me.

you caught the tide but
i didn't.

She calls out coral in a
mess of greens,
her words get caught in
painted screens. Hiding in
her cyber-cave, her outer
shell the thing she gave (and
gives them still, with brittle
smile, and eyes as green-blue
as the Nile). With closed doors
shining in her eyes, she sketches
people dreams in skies, and
smiles still when they thank her,
blithe (she knows she's skinny,
calls it lithe). She smiles but it's like
lips on paper, crayon-red and
gone like vapour.

You clever, cunning little thing
with your barbed-wire smile and
scissor-snap comments. You with your
soft hands and hard heart, with that
blue-before-storm within your eyes.
Today you cut him down with a
candy cane, shone your
teeth in a conman's smile and
sliced someone's secrets open with
the tip of your silver tongue.
You're so very
brilliant, and as cold as a
winter siege. (Are your feelings
crystal cut? Is your heart a
precious stone? You breathe ice
into others- but you've
never been alone).

please don't shout
can't you tell
her day has been
**** as well

please don't shout
and act all mean-
deviate from
the routine

turn around
and maybe smile
(haven't seen that
in a while)

please don't shout
can't you see
*this is not how
it should be

your gaze was always wider-eyed than mine-
you'd say things were brilliant, i'd say "fine".