Requiem

It hits me every time I come back:
the smell of his soap in the bathroom.

I am still scared I made him up,
my Charles from 'A Beautiful Mind',
but this perfume that refuses to fade -
it suggests otherwise.

No candles lit in the cathedral for us;
I didn't give anything a funeral this time,
because I find when I do, things
have a habit of coming back to life.

I sit on the banks of the Wear,
in my red hoody, like an open wound,
or a scorch-mark. Black grass makes
up my fraying edges in a thick cross-hatch.

I wonder when he realised I wasn't coming back?

Lectures on Plath should bother me,
but the spotlight of the projector is on a sketch
of Top Withens. I am spectator,
and the thought of him is late in arriving.

It does not occur until I am thrown
into a forest of black umbrellas, swollen
pavement river, and that may be him
hurrying down the hill - no matter.
I turn away: I will not wait.

It is never too wet for cigarettes -
if you know where to hide. Last weekend,
in France, I became the heartbeat of a bunker.
Lighting up, I thanked God I wasn't looking
at the same grey wall for a fourth year running,
moaning about my other dirty habit.

Maybe when I realised he wasn't coming back either.

We reached our punchline long before
I thought we would: the doctor
pops the shoulder back on 'two'.

For our final six months I was just angry -
spent most of my time winning imaginary arguments
with him in the shower. Got worked up walking to lectures.
But the anger died with us.
Fingers flowered from the fist.
Now what?

I bet on a horse with his name,
and ate a whole jar of Nutella.

I don't know what.

One day I'll forget, but never completely.
Even when the smell of soap is gone,
and he too gone with it into obscurity,
something will remain - when I can't
remember what or when or where,
a trace will still be there.

But for now, getting into bed, whale-heavy
with memory, I can sleep,

because I know I'm the one who broke all their promises.