Twelve
Someone was in the house, in my room I tell the police. The summer
I turn 12, standing in the kitchen Karate Kid cocky. Fingers wild
with popsicle juice & the murder of flying ants, their bodies burst cranberry
on the wood parquet, antennae twitching like the Detective Inspector’s right eye
when he looks at me. Doesn’t know I was awake at 2am with the Honda humming
quiet clicks on the phone, the cord stretched under my door umbilical tight.
Should I tell him about the men who ask me to call them daddy? I lie in the yard
where we buried the cats thinking about crowbars & getaway cars, the speed & sweat
of forced entry. Suck my arm & count to ten, blood vessels swell. I know what thieves
leave behind. A sky bedsheet grey, wishbones from cold Sunday roasts & the plum tree
that gives no fruit. Bottles of Gordon’s, tooth fairy’s tipple. Milk teeth rotting
beneath the pillow when she forgets to visit. Garlic smell of dinner parties & betrayal.
The ring with the ruby star that Dad twists beneath his knuckle. Mum lying awake
for years. They say I am too young to understand the value of what was stolen.
As the welt on my arm rises I am slick with the saliva of criminals.
Why didn’t they take me too?
* * * * *
Conduit
Death is in the water
grey & lazy
I fell in once
as a child my first act
of slippery defiance
mistaking silt & feathers for love
Death is leaking sewage
from the passageway
I drifted untethered
hiss from the lock as it emptied
screech from the aviary
above
Death is spying
on lovers out for a stroll
I sank slowly
school shoes unbuckled
the charred sky softening
Death is clawing
muddy fingers on the towpath
I yielded to the canal bed
my limbs tasting damp earth
& forgetting
I spat & kicked
when he dragged me out
biting the man
his hero arms
& wet mouth on mine
Death in my lungs I breathe in
* * * * *
Permit me to write my own ending
I will tell you a secret as you burn through your journey,
thirsty & thankless: I used to watch you in the mirror
plotting conquests in your Levis, your shirt unbuttoned
for the revolution. Airmail envelopes buried in drawers,
a maze of years collapsing with each infidelity, your reflection
ordering me to trust you. But I am tired of your real skin,
of history & its thickening red voice. Ink on your fingers
& girls in your crosshairs, I taste abandon in the bite
of your cologne. Now it is spring — permit me
to write my own ending. Tonight I will slip out the back,
no longer witness to your misadventures, their gap teeth
& low-cut blouses & you, stray dog, your drooling jaws
open wide, reaching into your new decade. I have closed
myself before, a kitchen in midwinter. But I refuse to wait
with the cat that sits on the balcony, urging me to leave.
You will find ash where I burned your clothes.