It was a bruising day. At some point, later, nursing a pair of bandaged, swollen knees, after a hard fall, I listen for you in the silence,

wondering as to the fibrous connective tissue of memory and absence.

All I hear is the slow whispering back of discolouring dark, soft bruising that will mark my skin for weeks. I hear he's passed away too, last July

 - a year to the month, perhaps, even the day to yours. 

 

Did his body drown like yours with alcoholic saturation?

Some stranger, a cousin of his - seems far too young by the FB headshot

grinning through spectacles, I'm told seeks me out and still no word.

perhaps never. I stare at a photograph of the pair of you

with two strangers in some local pub; the distances between you all,

unfathomable. I know none of you; only two names wrapped

between July, of fabric sunk in booze and eyes which look beyond

the lens, and beyond me, backward, into their pain; tender, fragile,

brittle, each seeking asylum in bruised voices and impossible stories

of hard falling.

 

My bandaged heart wearing observance as ritual kneels, to the sudden

startling of wings. A pair of Hadeda ibises resettle on the lawn, death's

foreboding for some and mid their squawk-calling, I see you reflected

against the glass, shadow memory of your feral romantic affection for the

beauty of these 'graylings'.

 

And I wonder what if your life had taken flight . . .