memoryhouse

I listen to us saying goodbye
without taking off my coat.
Your voice breaks.

No need to say it again and again.
I come home and hunt for brown paper, scissors, glue,
if i work fast nothing will be lost.

Not the way you held my face
perhaps turning it to the light,
a precious stone you had to value.

Not the weight of your hands
upon me
their restraint natural as gravity.

The package will be sealed
so light can’t touch it,
safe on the dressing table in the bedroom.

Then we will have said goodbye
and I will have said, look,
it is not destroyed.

If you don’t believe me
I will post it to you.

I will use lists as my defence,
each item a stone in the barricade
keeping you in your place.

The easiest comes first –
capital cities, Shakespeare’s heroines,
names beginning with E.

You hover over me
waiting until I relax or forget,
fingers drumming on my chest.

I’m running out of categories:
dog breeds, prime ministers,
lovers who left me, lovers I left,

authors with unusual names,
English counties, types of cheese.
Nothing helps.

You’re waiting for me
in the contents of rock pools,
red hair mingling with anemone’s tendrils.

 

I though it was a withered leaf
rising in the wind
Then on my hand
a butterfly

It will last no longer
than a leaf
that must fall
this autumn

(And I no longer
than a butterfly
in our love’s ebb
and flow)

But it flutters
and strokes my hand
on which it still moves
and does not know it