Audio
Credits
From Room of Thieves, Salt Publishing, 2013
First published in the Bridport Prize 2010 anthology
Emma's Porch
​
Emma, it is 8am and the light in the front porch
is the colour of your hair. School is waiting.
​
The barometer is hanging the top side of fair,
its coils and springs pulling both ways,
teasing the atmosphere like a fine wool.
The tension holds the needle static, so the whole
appears to be broken, as barometers sometimes do.
​
I touch my nose to it and breathe; imagine it is a silent clock
which does time backwards as well as forwards.
​
Of course there is hoovering
and conversations high over the hoovering
and the claim of being “almost ready”.
I am sometimes late to call for you,
you are never ready and there is always hoovering.
​
I count passing cars, bright paint samplers,
as they bobble the patterned glass of the front door.
​
Your Granddad's shoes are gone from the coat stand,
there is at least one jacket less and the smell,
well it is the same, but a note has ceased to sound,
like a vital spice missing from a dish.
I think of each of the objects that hangs orphaned in his shed.
​
I am always waiting in the hallway;
there is no going in with shoes on.
​
I look behind the upright of the coat stand
for that single foam bead
on the foam bead wallpaper
where I press my thumbnail every morning.