Work Text:
I
You were born:
Your mother cried,
Glad that the world
Had been given such a gift.
Dad rang half the town,
Said to meet him at the Legion,
Bought everyone a pint,
Shared cigars with the whole bar—
So proud he was, like
An overfull hot air balloon.
Jemima was born:
You were four years old
And had never seen anything
So small or beautiful.
They brought her home from hospital;
Dad knelt in front of you,
Looked into your moon-big eyes
And said,
"Would you like to hold her?
She's tougher than she looks,
But be very careful."
He handed her to you (she
Seemed much bigger in your arms,
And heavier than you thought).
You touched your stubby reverent fingers
To her forehead,
Brushed her wispy mousy hair back,
And she smiled at you
For the first time.
II
You met Rick Macy in middle school:
The back of his head
Was one of the first things
You learned to draw by memory alone.
One day he stopped you in the corridor,
Pierced you through with just his eyes,
Said, "What you always staring for,
Ren Walker?" So you, stammering,
With shaking hands, showed him.
He said, "Regular Picasso, aren't you?"
Without a hint of schoolboy cruelty:
Genuinely, kindly impressed
At those messy biro scribbles
You had never meant anyone to see.
Your stomach had never jumped
Quite like that before.
One day he let you sketch him
In charcoals. He fidgeted
The whole time, foot tapping,
Couldn't seem to sit still,
So anxious he was to see
The final product. Once
You dabbled disastrously in oils, once
In watercolors that wrinkled the page
When they finally dried. Once
He wiped a smudge of coloured chalk
Off your cheek with the pad
Of his thumb and you thought
You might die right then,
The way the lightning pace
Of your heartbeat
Threatened to thundercrack
Your chest open.
III
He adored football, race cars,
Rockets, guns, maths,
Your little sister, Mum's beef roast,
And you. Even though you were
Nothing special, just a skinny kid
Who was too into whatever music
Made old Mrs Lamb's eyes go wide
With staunch Protestant indignation.
He smiled when you showed him
Radiohead, the Ramones,
The Sex Pistols— proper laugh there—
Morrissey, the Cure, Fall Out Boy.
The Macy father
Did not find it all so amusing:
His only son, led astray
By a haloed heathen
With crumbling dry paint
Under his bitten-down fingernails.
There Rick stood, head bowed,
Almost ashamed, hands clasped
Prayerfully behind his back
As Bill Macy threatened you
With the broken halves
Of a compact disc.
From then on things were different:
You spoke in secret notes,
Teenage boys' dead letter drops,
Paying off friends in sweets and spare change
To deliver messages of devotion,
Hand to God, amen.
But that
Didn't stop you. Nothing could:
You were meant to be together—
Fate had brought you together—
And you knew you could never bear
Having to sketch someone else
In such delicate, careful strokes.
You had a thousand days
Of secret togetherness;
Four birthday parties with just your family.
One night, with no one around but Mother Earth,
You asked him to go away with you:
He took your artist's hand
In his rough farm boy's one,
And said yes, I will, yes.
Then: he joined the service.
Jealousy was your first reaction:
How could Queen and Country
Mean more to him than you?
He promised forever
And only gave you
Three or four nights of it.
Then: he died.
Everything
Went to shit.
An IED, it was.
Side of the road.
It killed him and
His Army mates
Instantly. Never
Saw it coming.
IV
Bill Macy had frozen your blood,
Stuck your feet to the spot with his roar,
And you still hadn't felt such fear.
V
You let yourself be angry with him
For all of fifteen minutes.
Then cold calculation took over—
Meticulous, an artist's planning,
Working over the composition
Until he gets it just right—
And you started to think
What on Earth you could do.
You couldn't be a person on your own.
VI
You promised yourself
One last day with everyone—
Mum, Dad, Jem— because that
Was what Rick would have wanted;
He loved your family. You'd
Watch the sunset alone—
One last sunset, alone—
Then go down the cave
And do what wanted doing.
You thought about
Doing it in the Macy barn,
But you didn't want
To give him the satisfaction,
The bastard.
VII
The day dragged on (like
Waiting for Harry Potter at midnight,
Only with less of a reward
When the clock finally chimed).
You almost lost your nerve
When Jem came home from school,
But you stuck it out.
Told Mum you'd be going for a walk;
"Back before dinner, Kier," she said.
You grabbed your coat on the way out—
Stupid, not like you'd need it.
VIII
The sunset was like
Every other sunset.
The cave was
Just a cave
With just you in it.
You settled into the dirt inside,
Leaned against the wall,
Your breath coming out in clouds
In the chill of the evening.
You didn't plan on coming back.
The knife bit into your wrist,
A starved wild animal with
Its own agenda. You almost dropped it:
You didn't realise it had been
So hungry.
A storm gusted outside (you were glad
You'd brought your coat after all).
Even though you liked asymmetry,
Preferred things that leaned toward
One side or the other, you
Kept on, balanced the wide long slash
With another. You did drop it then;
Your fingers wouldn't stay tight
Around the bright red handle.
The last thing you remember thinking,
As relief swallowed you up
In light and shadow, was,
Well now that's done: and I'm glad
It's over.
IX
Your father came looking
When you were late to dinner.
He carried you back to the house.
Mother Earth washed your hands
With rain water. Too late.
Your mother cried because
You had taken such a gift
From the world.
Jem didn't speak for weeks.
X
You didn't plan on coming back,
But you did. You were a knife,
A bludgeon, an IED, destruction,
The Living One who was dead.
Such a storm blew; Mother Earth
Bathed the grave dirt from you.
The moon shone like
A goddess' winking eye.
The others rose up around you,
And you saw her, struggling,
Muddy ground still
Clasping her round the waist,
A lover unwilling to part.
You helped her up; you touched
Your cracked-nail fingers
To her forehead, brushed
Her tangled curly brown hair away,
And she smiled at you
For the first time.
You didn't know hunger:
You knew gnawing,
Scratching, clawing,
White pain, threatening
To rip open your animal belly
From the inside.
The screaming itch
You couldn't erase.
It only stopped when
You broke them open,
Ate of the fruit, juice dripping
Down your arms,
Staining your sour mouth
Pomegranate red.
There was a girl
With her hands on
Her big silver gun.
She took
One hand off
Her big silver gun,
Turned, ran.
XI
You woke up in hospital.
Rick Macy was still dead;
You still felt hollow
On the inside,
Burned-out shell,
Bombed-out stomach.
XII
You hadn't planned on coming back.
XIII
The light shined in the darkness,
And the darkness did not blot it out.