If I could sculpt one memory
I would sculpt your eyes

looking like an enemy looks
at their foe's demise.

Looking lavishly and certain.
Certain, like a child

looks underneath a Christmas tree
expecting surprise.

You were engaged when we first met.
Teenaged and exiled

and still my counterproposals
trigger sorry sighs.

Hammer attack surgeries,
Farmer controlled nurseries,
A Llama themed bakery
And a duck.

I see my gross reflection,
It stares right back at me
I think that I'm two people
It doesn't think: it's me!

Pete told me he killed someone
When he was a policeman
He was only 23
Him and PC Brooks got called to
number 1, consista court
Arthur was an 84
Year old naked grandad
Arms and legs were red raw
As he lay in the bath
Quietly groaning
His daughter was sobbing
And Pete remembers it all

Brooks and Pete they reassure
Tell him he's a right plonker
And Pete takes the shower head
Tests it first and showers him
With cold water on his legs
Skin peels in his hands
And Pete feels something
That won't ever go away.

It's ok, Pete.

Pete's proud of his daughter
Shows me her on his phone
She competes in gymnastics
On a balance beam doing back flips;
He's met Elton John
Was given a tour of his home,
He earns enough to get by
But wants to start a landscaping business.

"Vale. Bien. Me voy."
And looking into his eye,
letting him know how those rules have made me feel -
how they've made me ache.
How I despise his way of life -
how it's so inhuman to me
and I'll look at him like I look at something grotesque happening
that I know I can't change.
Or better even, look at him like a
dying animal in its death throes.
And then let him disappear in front of me -
banishing him to those dungeons
that are my memories best
                                                left
                                                       alone.

Stuck
Fraught
Distraught
by thoughts:
echoes of intentions unfought.
Stalled by feelings unseen.
Stoppable without skills or a team.
Where's my tribe where my body can breathe?
Where's my test where my body can heave
all the weight of the world for a time and seize
a moment alive to lift the seas
and blind the sun with ecstasy.

I'm a puddle
in the shade,
too afraid to
let the sun
dry me up.

I make walkers
play my game,
it's a pain when they step
in me
as they're climbing up.

Why can't I be hard like stone
but cushion like velvet grass
and help all of the travellers pass?

Why can't I live in the sun?
It seems like so much more fun
than being a puddle living in the shade.