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A Clockwise Direction

I found that old wedding photo we lost 
behind a doll in our daughter’s room. 
Russian, as it happens, the doll that is -   
I can read some significance in that:  
so full of themselves, they miss the bleeding 
obvious. I wiped the dust from off its surface, 
made you 21 again and placed us 

on the bookshelf where P meets Q. 
I’d have liked it before your favourite author 
but her shelf’s too close to the ground.  
All my books are still in alphabetical order;
I wake at 7 to clean and tidy,
progressing in a clockwise direction,
starting at the front door and ending in the bath.  

I compare it to my parents’ wedding picture 
that’s hanging next to the dining room door: 
they’d a bigger cake, more friends and relations, 
dressed black and white, a formal occasion;
contemplative, no eye for the camera.  
My mother’s fuller in the face than I remember 
and isn’t that an ashtray beside the cake? 

I blow these pictures up out of proportion 
trying to discover germs of the future: 
leukaemia, cancer and emphysema 
buried within a forgotten Baboushka.
How happy we appear! My Mum said never 
had I looked so handsome, like Richard Gere. 
Perhaps that’s the joke I’m laughing at. 

Behind us I trace the faintest whisper 
of the tower blocks tumbled in ‘88.
As we’re cutting the cake, your face 
burns with embarrassment    
or anticipation of the sauce to come.
I can feel the grip that you have on my arm,
as if I might be the first to depart.  

When lights fade I think I can hear you breathing, 
but it’s central heating or a noise in the attic.
I close the windows to keep your scent in  
and reach out to touch an amputation - 
I said we shouldn’t buy a bed this wide.  
You never see pictures taken at funerals 
unless somebody important has died.
 
   
   
🌷(6)

◄ Like Benjamin Zephaniah

A Day Unresolved ►

Comments

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Ray Miller

Tue 9th Apr 2024 12:22

Thanks, David.

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David RL Moore

Thu 4th Apr 2024 07:31

Hi Penguin,

A sad portrayal of the routine and mundanity of survival.

Remembrance in the smaller things is often the thing that punctures the protective outer shell of our loneliness.

Sensitively written, lovely.

David

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