Pepo
Her imaginary friend died on the morning
of her eighth birthday and what a lesson to learn
as her living friends screech in the garden
like mosquitoes, wearing down the grass with
their flashing shoes, and the balloons stare
back at her with furious eyes. Her cake was
a castle she cut into pieces with a butter knife.
She ate the tower her imaginary friend
would have lived in, and left her tower
where it was, as a symbol of her solitude.
To mark a week since that day,
she takes a watermelon to their favourite spot
by the pond, where they first met, under a roof
of trees. She sits on the froggy leaves, carves
the watermelon into pieces, feels the ache
of something irreversible happening with each
crack of its skin, senses her heart becoming baggy.
She imagines she is cutting up the world, blasting
an atlas to its edges. She places the continents
in separate spots around the pond’s edge,
then leaves them to contemplate this
new state of being, the insurmountable water.