First Drink

It started badly, his bulging hand,
Gripping mine too tight
Pulling me to the car
Slamming the door
Screeching on hot tires, gravel spurting.
Mother wringing her hands on the doorstep.

And then the pretty garden, strung about with fairy lights
Crickets chorusing the soft air
The tropical air.

A pink gin for him with angostura bitters,
Gin and orange, sickly with sugar, for me
It stings the back of my throat.

He calms with the gin,
On the third or fourth
I don’t say a word.

If I could take the sting
Out of the memories,
That drive him back to war again and again
To shoot it out in the wardrobe
With a coat-hanger gun, I would.

I’m too small.

Walking back to the car
His hand now big and soft
Surrounds all of my small one,
Daddy bear, baby paw
No crushing bones now.

On the edge of the pavement
We stare at the huge sky so full of stars.
He asks me to imagine, just imagine
If we weren’t here, if there was only that up there
I try, I whirl into space
There is only his hand.