The Following Days
The following day there was nowhere to go.
Not a café in which to roll your chair up to a window,
not a seat in the lounge to watch you read the paper,
not a supermarket to let you buy cakes you didn’t eat.
The following day there was nothing to do.
I couldn’t make you a cup of tea with too much sugar,
try to explain what your grandchildren do for a living,
or watch colour-fading repeats of Inspector Morse.
The following day there was nobody to visit.
Not your friends on the tills in Tesco, not the doctor,
not my sister at her house around the corner,
not my brother in London, or my father in his grave.
The following day I went to the beach and sat on a wall.
My body heaved, felt hollowed out, its contents vanished
but for a curl of sickness, a knot of cornered beast, a bloom
of bile with nowhere from which to throw itself in the sea.
The following day I walked on the sands, along the shore.
I didn’t know the names of anything, which way was north,
how a motherless child can wipe its mouth, wash its hair,
draw a picture of the sky and give it to somebody.