our afternoon

He made me prizes at nursery school,
a picture in green crayon that might be a car,
a piece of smartie tube glued inside a toilet roll.

It was the day when Horton heard a Who
and we re-enacted it with Lego and the theme song he made up,
the day of the snow that didn't stay,
the day when Percy the cheeky engine didn't listen
and drove into the harbour,
the day his family said goodbye to his Grandfather.

He fell asleep next to me on the sofa as the
light in the room became blueish
and the snow floated and melted,
his eyelids flickered and he gripped my thumb.

Later, he may remember our list-of-phone-numbers afternoon,
the blackening, rejected banana
"I will not eat it in the rain, I will not eat it on a train"
the peel-free apple slices and the heap of
pinkish green slivers that I chewed
in between stories.