Despite your clothes, despite
the number of times you dye your hair
yourself, in the bathroom,
(it never fades into silver
because you never let it),
even though you are fully aware
of fading,
shrinking into a little black dot,
the way I imagine it, a full stop on a train platform
or something, maybe…
Despite all of this –
and it’s like oven burns,
pine needles stuck in my feet
when I was three –
moments still beat round
to slap my cheeks red raw,
like last weekend and turning
from the kitchen sink
to look at you
to see myself and my brother
and my other brother
and the layers of cold concrete
smoothing down in knife-strokes on top of one another.
Remember the sand in Cromer,
reeds poked through, I said
they were like sewing pins
and sat in the middle of them, protected,
and completely surrounded
by their aloofness.
Jack was teething and would not stop screaming.
The coast went on for miles.
Oh Mum, if you wonder why I
run upstairs it’s only that
I want you as some inanimate piece of furniture,
childhood wardrobe,
or the frozen grin of a tough plastic doll
hidden in my pocket,
or anything to distract the sliding black lake
lapping up around your ankles.