Thunderclap, Cloudburst
There was a tick feeding on the back of your head.
We found it when we were in the bath.
I rushed in and popped its engorged
body with tweezers and my anxiety.
Its jaws remained clamped into your flesh.
The woman on the NHS helpline said
“Get to hospital immediately.”
We laughed– occasional stoics us –
and got on our bikes, prepared for a full night
in the A+E waiting room.
Skipping much of the room of patients-to-be,
some of whom may have been fatally ill,
I wondered if the helpline advice wasn’t so hysterical.
They sent us through to a small room
bordered from the corridor by a curtain.
You were up high on a bed, and I sat
a few feet away in a chair.
The nurse inspected you then left to fetch a doctor
and you sat there humming,
swinging your legs off the edge.
Some invisible moon tugged my tide,
and in that moment I was in love with you
in a way I’d never known before.
Staring up at you,
you were so singular, so wild,
quietly turbulent, filled with mysterious force,
your eyes burning silently;
like you’d just told me an enormous secret
whose truth I’d suspected for years.
Thunderclap, cloudburst;
the future filling up in front of me.
A stone-clad house beside the sea,
collie-spaniel cross-breeds milling between my legs,
a wellie-booted kid pronouncing your name as “mum”!
And now, months since we warmed the same bed
I can’t help but wonder if every bit
of pain a person can bear
might be worth it just to feel like that
for a few moments in a lifetime,
like all the ticks and hospitals
and overdraft charges
and bereavements
and stubborn rashes
and out-of-date hummus
and backstabbings
and litter-filled rivers
and sleepless nights
and cheap aftershave
and sleet
in the world
just fall away to become
dwindling specks on the horizon.
Nothing but love
as far as the eye can see.
