brittled
with age, to grasp what’s come to light,
you
chafe the jaded Swan Vesta across
its
worn sandpaper-page – in that dank
yellow
box the crumbly duds outweigh
the
live. We hunch around you in mumbling
suspense,
like Neanderthals at their first glimpse
of
fire. At last, a cursive scribble detonates
with
a sound like Velcro unseaming.
We
recoil a touch, as you stoop, and communicate
the
momentary, palm-cupped flame to a candle:
a
glow-worm sacrificed to a glow-animal.
That
abrupt blackout – moments before,
as
though the whole house fell unconscious -
had
you rooting through cupboards, rifling drawers
like
an intruder to unearth these instruments
of
sight, locating the children through a sonar
of
name-calls and blindman’s-buff gropings.
Soon
enough, the living-room’s ushered back
as
a woozy apparition coaxed from tea-lights,
eery for a moment as a séance
or
Hall of Rest. But someone’s prised out
a
November sparkler or two, crackling-bright
and
acrid: they arc-weld the candle-haloes together
and
sear a blurred initial on your retina.
Bereaved
of TV, we soon lope to bed, probing
with
torch-beam the wraith-mobbed corridor
of
the stairs. I colonise the freezing sheets
inch
by inch, resisting awhile the liminal dreams
that
muster in the frostscapes on our window,
afraid
to miss the sleep-balm of your last Goodnight;
then
burrowing deeper, mining for warm,
I
replay my body’s initial unclenching
in
the vivid, tactile blackness of your womb.
First published in Human Form, March 2013
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