Thinking Smaller

My Familiar


I remember you much smaller
hiding behind the same blue curtain,
I was seeking you, the same old person
I thought I ever was,
scared that our familiars
wouldn't warm to who I believed I was to be,
knowing you were already
greener, healthier than me.
You were much smaller then,
but like the bulb through a pinhole
I was older then
my future passing on a foot sole.




Keeping away from the grey


Like the deflating bouncy castle
soft blocks of primary colour busting into the afternoon
the moment the party's first parent says,
'I think it's time we made a move.'


Like, aged nine, when I stopped believing
in the fairies living in my friend's back garden
who left messages between halves of torn blades of grass
in a language only she could read -


like that sad whistling heap of empty canvas,
a beast too bright for his colour blindness,
like the old garden absentees
I let you down.


Colours dispersed behind us,
tiny tens of toes
and made up pairs of wings
decoded unsaid things
and became us.