– I had been lying there all night – and I couldn’t move. I opened my eyes and I was in the house and everything was black, dad – I had been at the party a few hours and I didn’t know anything about what happened, dad – and I felt someone touch me, but I was stiff, dad – I never been so stiff before – I tried to say it’s me, it’s me – but they were looking at me so strangely, dad – like he couldn’t stand to look at me – couldn’t stand the sight of me – Police always looked at me like that – and he turned me over – and he took the shirt from under me, and they wrapped me in a blanket and drove me here – and I was lying there waiting for you, dad – across the table, there were bodies, dad – Twisted, dad – no heads –like screaming branches of a tree, dad – loads of them, loads of them, I swear – and I heard them say – they were saying –

And then you came and I was calling out to you, dad – and I know you heard me because here we are, dad – come back – don’t bury me – I can’t stand it – I can barely stand it when the lights go off – and I’m here – and spend the whole night listening for you dad – I want to crawl between mum and you – in your bed, in your sheets, dad– that’s the only kind of burying I want –

Kitchen

I went back to my mother’s kitchen:

peas were soaking on the stove

and a lettuce was uncurling on

the counter. A plastic bag

filled with fish was deflating.

One of the eyes was pressed

against the side. seemed to be

the only thing that heard me.

this kitchen:

the crack in the window; the spice

rack with a hundred grubby bottles;

outside, my brother’s underwear

on the line, a postcard from

aunty in Antigua, a small shelf

peopled by Erna Brodber, Gus John.

the door to the bathroom:

I know that the floor is coldest

by the door, I know what it’s like to come

in here on a dark morning

and turn the taps and feel

the whole house warming up –

the gradual breath it takes through

the wallpaper, the carpet, the kettle,

the dutch pot, the kippers sparking in oil –

I have crept down through the dark,

listened to the house open

one red eye and spin it round,

then snort, then fall back to sleep;

I have held this house

in my arms and let it sob

on the bathroom floor, heard it in

the background of a call,

heard it speak a kind of love –

I have watched the street lights shudder

through this bathroom window,

shake themselves to black

and lick the daylight in their fur.

The first ray unencumbered

by the clouds spreads

its rose palm against the window –