'I will bury you in time' (Part I)

I

II

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Each room waited empty

by each quiet stir listened to from the bus stop, 

Entertaining the unmoved curtains protecting the same measure of dawn from breaking through the window each day.

Down the stairs the kettle laid in wait,

Greying glass postures on the windowsill greyed further in the meek light, passed by in the hours of a November afternoon.

Still moving were the innards, a nervous system of decades-old pipework that creaked to push droplets from the kitchen faucet, spewing thin bile straight from the underbelly of the plumbing. Wires shot like ventricles, a quiet hum that sparks light into seconds of flashed action from the red lights of turned-off televisions.

A house can forget that it is alone. 

*

I have come to hate myself

The made-up portrait on the wall, spinning auburn flowers, the alcoved-living room clock 

each mouthful of paint, laid in thick saliva over my brickwork bones. 

I have become alone, my soul denatured

only mirrored foreignly in the wetness of a teabag with spun off string,

left to dehydrate on the couchside coaster.

Feckless, Folly-Purpose.

*

A boy walked home. 

First seen to cross the corner by the paned bedroom glass, he stopped and lit a cigarette.

Its last diffused beads coughed into the glass afar, adding filth to the blackness of the unattended windowsill outside. 

He stood unaware, 

In the shaded greenery of the vet-side lawn, out of sight now from his brother's room. 

Meagre in the dusk, spotlit by streetlights,

A man in a high-vis jacket edged across the pavement

painting his shadow across the tarmac and worn tilework until skirting his hands along the doorframe of number 74,

Next the window, 

Then the welcome mat,

Then the edges of concrete that buried the foundations, 

Then he walked away.

Dropped back into awareness by the singe of burnt paper at his fingers, the boy traced the jacket into the darkness, detailing each lingering flash of silver that fell like a penny into a bottomless pit. 

He looked at the house across the road,

He left it alone.

*

Viscera:

The boy was unaware.

Landing light seethed through the cracked doorway

and retreated like a dog called from departure, 

The wound sealed with a click of his key stooping

now, to chastity.

A boy tracks his mud across my tongue, 

Tearing the scar-tissue-cellulite of my cheek to widen 

to a thinning spread of browned flesh.

He rested his feet on the muddied-carpet,

taking notice now to

unlace and move his boots to the corner,

off of the finery.

Touching in soft steps to the kitchen counter he raised a cup from the drawer and drank long of water 

from the kitchen sink. 

Now turning to the kettle, he clicked it to life sending shockwaves of bubbling water to boil.

Why did the sound make an enemy of silence?

stillness spurred to action

Like the unease of his neck, scanning each black window 

and meeting with reflection. 

But what was there to be seen in the garden?

The tyranny of a bannister creaks without explanation, 

But the breaks on the pavement outside lie behind closed doors.

*

Edging up the stairs, 

followed by the half-light of his mother’s bedside lamp,

He laid a mug to exhale into the air of his room

and was swallowed by the lungs of his bedsheets.

*

He will turn in the night for me to catch his fall,

to brush his hair with a faint hand back

into place,

But in the peeking disturbances in the wallpaper my vision is obscured and only now can I see, 

The ignorance within his vulnerability.

His flailing hands that wrap my walls, paint my skin,

lay to waste my masonry, carpet from floor, muscle from bone. 

Unrouting the mycology of the entire row,

and so, scarcely was that whisper heard 

through battered, failing underground pipework, 

so slight, unwaking of a child.

But I am not young and nor do I sleep, 

and so I heard its screams vibrate louder through the night, 

Screams.

Not the complaints of drunken piss-on-brick

or the flinch of a smashed glass, scratching floor 

genuine danger, immediate, that grew louder like roadkill the longer its left without relief, 

it hasn’t stopped since.

Yet you lay in rest, unaware that I watched your neglect, walking soon away from that door in danger - violated by rough hands

and in this stillness of a night you entrust me to keep you,

lying dumb, lest the world should fold in on itself and laminate you in the squeeze. 

Well I have tasted your blood and your waste, 

I have held out my hands for your brittle teeth to fall

I have watched them regrow in the bathroom mirror, before, with a full set cleaned under buzzing light, 

you have spat in my mouth.

And I swear to you now as you lay unaware;

I will bury you in time.