I heard her daughter was gone for days

They wouldn’t let her see the remains

And she came up in the morning

And she went down in the evening

And she came up with the rising of the sun

And she came up in the morning

And she went down in the evening

And when I turn around she was gone

And when I turn around she was gone

And when I turn around she was gone

And when I turn around she was gone

“Also, I think the thing about the current moment and loss is the sense that we don’t yet have the thing, but we already fear losing it.”

Pem-People

We have come to light a candle for you

Naomi, at the pop-up shop in Peckham.

We lay out red and green cloth, fairy lights,
bring a steaming pot of beans to share.

A woman stands in the centre.

Your death, she says, proves

that there is no difference between the one
you love and the one who kills you.

A man in a grey suit speaks from his seat,

saying he knew you. He is angry, talking of how you

loved tennis, the Williams Sisters

with their braids and their power, white-skirted

black thunder life-giving on the green.

He says you were as fierce as that.

Do we clap? Okay, we do. Then he asks for one
minute’s silence above the evening traffic,

dancehall, the people in the room above us,
and it is silent here – the minute comes and

passes and still it is silent. I take a yellow
Post-it note and try to write something true

but really I am hungry and tired, really

I have nothing, really I want to eat the bean stew alone

and watch Venus throw her serve across YouTube
until it takes me somewhere I did not intend.

Pace

I have seen the light you’ve seen

and my body has been where yours has been

some part of me resides where you reside

we’ve swapped presences and parting –

I have seen what you have seen

become the part of you I stood beside

passing friend with green eyes

I now reside where you reside –

hello, you standing there to the left of me

you in the heart of those hearing me read

further ahead on the road we are walking

there in the shadow performing in front of me –

you in the rhythm that’s always unfolding

you are a question that’s always been asked

who are we now and what are we wanting

from the voices you heard, the presences there –

how do we ask the quiet you’ve left

what voice you recalled

whose hand you were holding?

Tympanum

Wood smoke of black Anglicans behind the body.

As he was in life, he is heavy. Pallbearers lock knees

against the weight and tilt the coffin over the lip.

The tips of my father’s fingers guide me by the back of the head.