She carries keys in her hand
though she dropped her car off
underground and across land
over an hour ago,
it’s a status symbol,
as is her tight dress
and higher heels than the rest,
her handbag too is money defined
lined with faux fur she thinks is real
with a teal exterior that, well,
is the cheapest colour on her person.

She sits in between the
no-purpose-at-all-walls,
studded and wrong and placed
at angles in the room that
throw light from shade to gloom.

The foundations are first to go
in a collapse of brick not known in this lifetime,
only that long ago,
though many people will try to reason it in rhyme.

We used to knock bottles off walls
throwing cancer and heart attacks
to watch the glass shatter
and fall,
break into jigsaw pieces on the floor

and now,

we weep into cups so not
to ruin the carpets the deceased gave us
and gave up.
Turkish yarn and rugs from town
and never knowing quality when we see it.

all faith was lost in a caravan car park with seats reclined,
a family of four, small and contorted, wrapped
around a car for an uncomfortable night of no sleep,
and for the soundtrack:
                                                propeller blades of the port and a grown man weeping.

now we understand and gather and know and grasp the concept of loss,
now it's a:
                                                brother to a younger sister
                                                and now a lost son to forever mother
                                                and a lonely child to a missed father,
                                                insurance-won't-be-done-on-time
                                                because the route-master turned up late.

now loss can never be found so it stays stuck in memory,
now memory is:
                                              reverse the car into the garage and don't stop for the wall,
                                              or bend over double and crawl into the back of a van
                                              duck down because you're tall for your age.

so now you're no longer and when this is realised
i will write this up into a stage play for you
to hide and conceal and disguise the face that will undoubtedly bloom in tears.

*Earlier my eyes wandered looking for someone through a window watching the main street in the rain. It's been a year and still you've missed the refrain, we'll try again on the chorus perhaps next year sometime.

it's a misgiving feeling the thought of you leaving*

An airport terminal stretch of time
between the metaphor in my head
and the rhyme of your feet
stepping quietly on up ahead.

You said you'd be back within weeks,
business takes days, it's a climb
to the highest peak, you said
whilst walking through the gates.

It's a misgiving feeling
the sight of you leaving
you bag in tow down terminal's row
passport control, doors out,
disappearing

For the Disney print princess
who knows what she's about,
who finds fascinating worlds within dust cover jackets,
who sends smiles in parenthesis; lost love brackets
over classroom mid-drifts,
a bare silence interrupted by pure kindness;
for who walks in noise behind inaudible
commuters from this station to that station
all the way home and back out again on her family vacation,
who can match and pair t-shirts and jeans with
bowler hat crowns from the palace of queens,
who, for all we know, could eat with elbows on tables
and read not prose, but short fiction fables,
who wouldn’t hold doors open or say thank you
to bus men and their drivers,
who might smoke away her pay
with great plumes almost every day,

who might not be the girl I thought she was.

Fog over fields
that sits steady over the grass,
the blades are perspiring
whilst Ossett over the farms
sits lonesome with its spire.

Cut through the avenue of oak
with the windows down
and let the breeze run in and walk around;
altitude ears that are placed firmly on the ground
despite bursting into new forms
of sound waves, a concerning
amount of damage caused by
just the wind through the windows wide.

We’re off the hospital
to watch another relative die.