lunch on tuesday

You worked miracles that last Christmas in Tucson.
When you remarked, “Let’s do this again,
next year”, you gave us permission
to forget where we were
and the freedom to
believe that almost
anything was
possible.

Winter
that year
was as cold
as the
summer
was unbearable.
The chimney was
blocked and the pipes
were frozen. The
heating wasn’t
cooperating.
I remember
you levering open
the front door, pushing
against the snow. You tromped
to the bins, shining
your torch over
the white
blanket
of earth.
No one came,
of course, to collect
the rubbish. But when you
limped back inside, I remember the
scrape of your eyelashes as
they flapped against my
my too-dry skin
when you
pressed
against me,
massaging my hands,
attempting to steal the
warmth from my numb fingers.
Do you remember how we huddled
together in front of the oven door,
wrapped in a rug turned duvet,
telling each other stories of
campfires past, radiators now
and summers ahead.
The cold
continued
to creep
through our bodies,
spreading its blueness like
a bruise. You decided coldness
tasted the same as aluminium foil
crushed between one’s back teeth;
after several hours of
chattering, I found
that I
agreed.
As time
passed, we found
that words began to
fail us. Sound only startled.
Words lost their meaning.
We held our
eyes closed.
Waiting
was the
only sensible course.
It was definitively cold.
we were living
in the
fringe
of December.

All the grapes were overdue for picking.
I was swimming in kilner jars,
not having a clue what
to do with seventy
pounds of fruit.
Jams were
not
setting.
The internet
advised using apples
to increase the pectin,
but the apples weren’t quite
ripe. So, you climbed the tree
and started to thwack the apples down
with a stick. I couldn’t stop laughing
as the apples rained down upon
my head. The apples were
bruised and tart, but
in the end,
the jam
set.

he:
adept at
adapting the rules
to suit the situation
(you were playing him one-on-one
but he declared your team offside)

she:
insisted on
rescuing the daffodils
left behind by strangers
(they needed drinks of water
to keep them alive for longer)

they:
were only
four and six,
your niece and nephew.

we:
might be
slightly older but
that’s the only difference.

It was disappointing to discover the titles
on the bookshelves in the bedroom,
so different from those proudly
on display downstairs. I don’t
always want to know
about the hats
that people
choose
for themselves
when they’re alone
or performing for people
who’d dislike those downstairs books.
There’s no need for carefully constructed
illusions to be spoiled without good cause.

I’d considered dressing you up in names
that didn’t quite fit so I
could parade you around, pretending
you’re something you aren’t.
For that, I
beg your
pardon.

To construct a crossword puzzle, you first
select the grid, pick words that
fit. It’s only afterwards that
you word the clues –
the things that
solvers notice
first.

To construct a conversation with you, first
I inject meaning into utterances that
are communicable in your language,
building the sense of
each sentence from
the inside
out.

losing my sense of direction
in a world where
not all signposts
point toward
dreams

making the first mark,
destroying open possibility,
defiling pure
whiteness
then
watching whilst
that mark unfolds
and the paper blossoms

One eye peeps open and the smell of something
new begins to cause quiet snaps in the
waking-up parts of the brain. If I
sit still for a moment before
I stretch, I might recall
the mechanics of starting.
It’s been awhile.
The morning
percolates.

rwp