Blink of an eye

You come in from the cold

Jawline stencilled

Between cap and shawl

“Kids asleep?” You ask

in your business voice -

meant for those

hallowed halls at work -

booming hollowly

in our quiet hallway

I point silently up

With one finger 

Miming with the other hand

To keep it down 

But too late! a patter 

of little feet above -

We share an eye roll 

BLINK

She sits towards the front

Of the grand lecture hall

Bobbed hair

bobbing, reined in

above the dizzy patterns

on the back of her

fashionably tailored blouse

I try out words

that might fit

into the spaces where 

fair skin peeks out -

filigree? lattice? network?

The last one wakes

Dr Johnson’s whispers 

In my nerdy head

‘A thing reticulated 

or decussated, with interstices intersecting at intervals’ 

I laugh alone at my

Sad Little Joke

BLINK

The cold has crept in

Insidious, uninvited 

Seditiously garnering

discontent against

Our Love that We placed

next to a burning bush

On the mountain we

climbed together

Hold my hand now

And Blaze 

- as you always do -

In full glory

And turn to ash those

leering skulls

lining up in 

the gloaming,

their eye sockets

brimful of emptiness

BLINK

This friend of friends

Seems more 

than a friend,

But surely we are

Just Friends?

(Note to self:

Be nice, you weirdo

Don’t freak her out)

BLINK

She hugs me 

As I hurt

As it has never hurt before

BLINK

I’m convinced

she is Samuel Shem’s Berry, 

but does she know this

Shem loving shy boy

Full of body fat and halitosis?

BLINK

She changed that 

old answer phone message

(Without telling me -

why should she?)

For 15 years I heard

That familiar voice caught

In a time warp - chirpy and

bouncy and innocent

And eternally young 

This New One is 

Powerful, Self Assured

Means Business, 

Announces the

Arrival of a Super Mom, and

expects Capitals for Impact

in the Middle of 

Hyperbolic Descriptives

But secretly I carry that 

Other one on an

endless loop in my head,

A young twenty something 

prancing around a

Standard issue 

NHS apartment

In a red and black

Lumberjack shirt

BLINK

Her hand 

feels right 

In mine 

Are these wrinkles new?

Surely they have 

always been there

under the fluorescent

streetlights filtering through 

mayflower branches in

tropical bloom

in the lambent glow

Of bedside LED

Quietly counting those nascent

hours budding in moonlight

Alighting gently on

The steering wheel

As you hum along 

With the motorway

Scenes flashing 

past Us on this 

Endless road trip 

Caught in mid-flight

In the blink of an eye 

Happy Anniversary

Constant Companion