Hairs

When my PC had a nervous breakdown, its electrical
cocktail of gin and DGs took with it – and from me –
c:\my docs\my life\my soul\my pics\my gallery.

And right on cue, an old dog friend of the family
began having a bad do. Last chance of a nice
photo-opp gone, I thought: maybe Kodak

are not promoting panic; they might have a point.
A good one. Pictures you can hold in your hand.
Goddamn. But since we snuffed our final goodbyes,

the sugarlumps in our throats, the things in our eyes,
we’ve been finding hairs. You can hoover all you want,
like scousers they get everywhere, and hover. And

call me a weirdo, but they’re better than photos. Packed
with her DNA, I can sniff them – and smell her – all day.
If you rub one on your arm, you can feel her backside, a

coconut shell, backing gingerly as a juggernaught into your
palms, to be scratched, fussed. If you hold a hair in the wind
(you must), it will flap about – like she did, as a moshpit lout –

for a stick held out, just out of reach. You can arrange hairs
to spell out words. I wrote THANKS, for walking my
wife-to-be through the dark, and leading her through, out

the other side – of Fletcher Moss park, to me. When I’m
on the motorway to one of many wasted days in Tedium,
her hairs on my back seat stand on end, and suddenly,

the overpass is the classy bridge over Lake Vrnwy, her sewer
breath like a hairdryer on my neck. I spy in the
rear-view mirror: her eyes bug like a late-eighties raver;

reading by scent the rave reviews of the lamp-post
guest books: “Best ever time had...you’ll be glad you went.”
Whining impatience, gauping, unable to decide between

the windows at the front or rear, off-side or near.
She pricks up her ears. Then, with Wales, she disappears.