You’re on a train, looking out the window, fields in bloom rushing past, and warm spring light everywhere. That is where I wrote this from:

---

I miss you. Child; seeing, sawing, feet aloft.
Brother – throwing amorous arms at hostile things.
Dog, eyes bright, begging, full of all the softness.
Tree, large, and climbed. Full of apples, I miss fearing your rot.
And you, Mother, with hand holding and just once tears, I miss you too.

And you, my heart, full of song and staring into. You I miss with angst.
I’d kiss your cheek asleep, early, you’d rouse and headlock me before I could leave. I miss that going.
I miss cold feet on calves. All those ways of knowing.
I miss the silent times fully.

I miss my own tears, in cinema screens, and jealousy.
My house, my cat, the birds that call and coo, the pub I rarely enter.
I miss the moon.
I miss making birth-, day-, and, pan-, cakes the way my mother did and does.
I miss your hips, and salt and vinegar laden chips.

---

Last night, around 4am, I abruptly woke up. There in that dark room I was afraid of things in my life. And today, reeling as I am from that imposition – the imposition of a thought that changes me – I know I can no longer finish this poem honestly. I could wait for it to come around again, that feeling, that light grip or I could do this, place it in context, as a fleeting thing, that came and went, and that is a memory now, another thing to be missed.

Josh x