Once
you were midnight
once upon a time
you were heaven sent
once you were latex
& imitation leather
once you were
midnight
midnight smelled of fast food
& French
perfume, skin rubbed with lilies
midnight smelled of
sex
smeared on a front
step
in a city where no
one sees you anyway
stumbling down
stairs
to pub toilets
& your own
lemon-scented sick
stumbling down stairs
into a rack
of imported
pornography
& falling into men
who look at you
& flash pointed
grins
who look at glossy
twists
of tits, arms, legs
& it’s all the
same –
it’s all the same
if you spread & pout
or if you don’t
once upon a time
you were midnight
once the sky was
invisible
behind streetlights
& the bulb
flickered
on
off
out
Cinders
The one thing he taught her
is that most things finish crumbled
up in the grate. She watched his mam
throw an old pair of shoes in once;
rubber smoke covered the room,
oily and black. But still they burned
and burned until only the soles
remained – misshapen, changed,
lumps of them cooling outside
in the ash pan the next morning.
In
the woods
We’d been along this path twice
but missed the spot. Today we stumbled
over where they found you:
‘S – in loving memory’.
So we take in the faded roses; we
read the cracked memorial engraved
with a rhyme someone draped over
your mother – like a silk mac in a
hailstorm.
I search for stories on deaths
in this wood: you were twenty five.
My youngest boy crouches down
tries to understand that a young man
is still someone’s child: a Peter
Rabbit mug
you’d long outgrown, ‘we miss you, dear
son’,
Kate
Garrett was born thirtysomething years ago in southwestern Ohio, but
settled in the UK at the back end of the 20th century. She writes poetry
and flash fiction, and edits other people's poetry and flash fiction.
She lives in Sheffield, England with three smalls, a cat and a
folkmusicianpoet. Visit her here: www.kategarrettwrites.co.uk
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