under construction

as a child, trespassing onto the building site, for the David Wilson Homes development, was like stumbling onto some shameful secret. The foundations, grey pits in the night, like hastily cemented mass graves. Bare metal poles jutting from the earth, polearms or glaives, lost from battle. Debris abounding, as though the skin was rejecting alien bodies from recent wounds. Incomplete breezeblock walls, coarse like sandpaper to a cold touch, leaving desolate spaces, unlived rooms, or the devastation of some terrible war crime, levelled lands, ruined homes. I knew that this was progress, some long, uncomfortable moment towards completion. But at the time, it felt like it could never come.

Describe him

He held my sky on shoulders
Like boughs of ancient trees –
Describe him, to me

His sun would linger over
All my sleeping valleys – please,
Wait here, for me

His arms could lift the boulders
From the place we used to be –
Can you remind him to me

His love was like a river
It led me to the sea –
Can you tell him, for me