Squeeze
All of a sudden
there’s a squeeze
around the heart.
Sharp. A wincing intake.
In a photo, it’s not the
summery smiles with ice cream
ghosts that
nettles, but the unspooling
since.
I feel it in a sugar crunch,
sharp with lemon,
in the opening of
a Top 40 climber.
In a dying wasp’s
final zuzz and flail.
And the Mother’s
Day card, battered and drooping.
Dear Mummy…
Sometimes in the prism glint
on the lake, it’s there,
and later, on the platform
in someone else’s
‘Welcome home.
‘How was your trip?’.
Scrunching of the gravel,
the piece – blue sky and fragment tree – from that Christmas’s puzzle,
the hollow of old optimism,
of plans made, abandoned.
The button from a dress,
a post card,
and tickets to a show,
C5 and C6 for the matinee.
In the squeeze, I’ll feel
And I’ll writhe away
“I’m fine, it’s something in my eye”
Until the next time.
Lovely. X