Are you safe?
by Sam Howell
Are you safe?
Have you noticed as I have that a bed's edges close in
without two bodies to hold them back?
And no number of instant messages
make distance easy to live with.
The cat left.
It took the first few weeks of soft words & pheromone to settle him and
bang, just like that the first firework ruined everything.
Chasing safety into insecurity, he made himself
a cruel part of the winter nights.
I ride the bus now
to distraction & forgetfulness, on occasion
look up from my book and try to identify what matters most in life,
mark between scarred frost fields & slick slate roofs
some insight 30 years have yet to prove.
I used to sit up top
among the unchecked volume of youth: school uniforms
unbroken voices & the constant tug of war between conformity
& the individuals they're aching to become.
I try to remember how it felt being them –
bodies desperate
to grow, skin as yet unblemished by what they'll one day learn
to think important. I think of the classmates who
joined me in my growing and realise
these are their children.
The top deck
rattles off its routine as the sun
which has risen somewhere beyond fogged hills struggles
greens & browns back into this our home beyond the window, light
moving slow as a yawn down the valley
Really I'm torn
between the past's impressions & the future's promises
A response to the National Poetry Month prompt