Love (Youth and Wither)

I still know our names are
Etched in permanent marker somewhere
With a heart as a bridge between them.
I know, somewhere, there is a
Dusty framed photograph,
The rainy day we got married,
And our names in red needlepoint below.
We match up, our graphs
Swoop and soar as a pair.

You have made me.
The day we met I was raw and crude.
But meeting you was loving you, and so
I have been moulded around the
Lazy curve of your back,
The jut of your elbow, so that
We might be put together as
An ornament on a shelf, one day.
I loved you as the hands you used to
Flex and wave so much
Began to spot, rotting.
We even slotted neatly and happily
Into the same thin pocket of air
In the earth.

Your hands encircled my
Newly-wed waist, and
I was the shape of a key.
We crept over the threshold
Of newborn - a life that was
Ours, and no longer yours or mine.
My skirts flapped as you chased me
Round what was to become the dining room.
And as a tall solitary bookshelf
Crashed to the floor, and broke,
My dress was ruined as we
Made love in dust that
We wrote our names in after.
I wore you round my neck
In those days, when
Touching you would help me think,
Or else snap out of a sudden fugue.

A bomb fell on my head one day -
At least I thought so,
For I heard the noises,
And the daylight went out.
My final thought - before
I realised I was still alive -
Was that I had perished
Thinking of you.

You bought me flowers once.
Not wrapped in cellophane
Or dusky pink paper,
But in a path up the stairs, to
A duvet of roses
Spread across our bed,
That brought a glow to me
As I struggled in with the shopping.
From behind the door,
You pounced.
Oranges rolled and I dropped the milk.
I was mouse and loving it,
You cat, and purring as I stroked.

Later, when I began to warp,
You stayed with me - your greatest gift -
And often held me, sometimes all night.
Your arms must've hurt.
I never saw you grimace.
And when I forgot what a
Banana was, and was scared like a bab,
You made me hold one,
And touch it, and smell it,
Repeating its name over and over
Like a bedtime rhyme
Until I had learnt it.
Though you were a teacher,
I loved you even more.
Though I cried and cried,
I did.

I love you in the purple flowers
That grew on our grave,
And in the stinging nettles
That grow there now.
I can still see you running
Towards me, throwing me
The ring before you got there,
And how it fell out of my hands
As they reached out to take you in.