Poems

And why should it be easier to talk to you, now that you are dead? You left a husk, not some empty chrysalid. I do not believe you winged and lovely eating cream cheese sandwiches in heaven

I bump into my neighbour in the supermarket and we exchange pleasantries. Chit chat. This and that. I feel as if I am five years old and waiting for my mother to stop talking

Barked knuckles in the smoke-breathed afternoon conkers strung and clacked, pints sipped chips defended from the pub Labrador, or palmed into his soft-mouthed grin.

I was nineteen when I stumbled across your newly-built facade and I knew right then, as the violins soared, That this was no easy first step on the ladder

A poem about my Mum

Sometimes I feel as though I spend my whole life apologising: to the client on the phone I swore at by mistake, to the two friends whose first meeting