'Manchester my Winter'
Mascara smudge and pillow shaped
by head now gone and back to home
where paying bills and being straight
and tying gifts with fingertips
that did a trick for me last night
is how it has to be;
And he won't know and she won't know
but we know where this thing will go
where rivers wide and thoughts ill-shaped
by time's raw fate
and love and hate
meet cul-de-sacs of nothing;
The scent of hair and hair on clothes
and make up flaked on last night's threads
and threads of lives and beads of sweat
we haven't seen betrayal, yet,
accelerates the fire;
From flush of youth to long time dead
twelve years in someone else's bed
you bring yourself to hold my gaze
dilation gives the game away;
your omnipresent verbal pause
accented pure Mancunian,
the tremor of your shyness;
In taxi queues at five past three
where office workers take their drink
like once-teetotal pledge-takers
methodism in their madness;
you lean right in, hips sway away
and take a cab the wrong way, south
I often dream but seldom sleep
the vacuum of your absence.
John Darwin
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