My body is like an urban car share.
\nIn the morning my ghosts climb aboard.
\nThey relish the journey without complaint.
\nThey like it best when I have time for breakfast
\nand ask them how they\u2019d like to spend the day.<\/p>\n
They are happy to come shopping, mow the lawn,
\nsearch the internet for replacement bulbs,
\nsit in the corner of my classroom, pretend
\nto enjoy the company of my colleagues:
\nit\u2019s bring-your-folks-to-work-day, forever.<\/p>\n
They disembark at night to fly around
\nand scare the children (for some reason
\nthey get a kick out of this), but I assure
\npeople they don\u2019t mean it. It\u2019s just their way
\nto engage with the cruel comedy of death.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the attention they crave, of course, and now
\nthey are free, they like to set the town on fire.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The following day there was nowhere to go.
\nNot a caf\u00e9 in which to roll your chair up to a window,
\nnot a seat in the lounge to watch you read the paper,
\nnot a supermarket to let you buy cakes you didn\u2019t eat.<\/p>\n
The following day there was nothing to do.
\nI couldn\u2019t make you a cup of tea with too much sugar,
\ntry to explain what your grandchildren do for a living,
\nor watch colour-fading repeats of Inspector Morse.<\/p>\n
The following day there was nobody to visit.
\nNot your friends on the tills in Tesco, not the doctor,
\nnot my sister at her house around the corner,
\nnot my brother in London, or my father in his grave.<\/p>\n
The following day I went to the beach and sat on a wall.
\nMy body heaved, felt hollowed out, its contents vanished
\nbut for a curl of sickness, a knot of cornered beast, a bloom
\nof bile with nowhere from which to throw itself in the sea.<\/p>\n
The following day I walked on the sands, along the shore.
\nI didn\u2019t know the names of anything, which way was north,
\nhow a motherless child can wipe its mouth, wash its hair,
\ndraw a picture of the sky and give it to somebody.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Commuters My body is like an urban car share. In the morning my ghosts climb aboard. They relish the journey without complaint. They like it best when I have time for breakfast and ask them how they\u2019d like to spend the day. They are happy to come shopping, mow the lawn, search the internet for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":328,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[408,405],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n