Auntie Eva
Forgive me for swinging on your doorknobs
and rummaging under your bed for the pot
where cobweb-haired ladies stored nightmares.
I’m sorry that your liquid-sixpence eyes
sent me running. You used to perch
in the bay window like a fading budgerigar
and when I kissed your cheek, you pecked me.
I never copied the way you pronounced
Toosday and stoo, and I was soured
by the skinny necks of your UHT milk bottles.
Your spongy ginger nuts gave me the fidgets,
your clock the slowest I’d ever seen.
They told me you’d had a stroke –
a stroke of what? I imagined a giant hand
reaching down for you from the clouds.
Of course your story hadn’t yet flowed
into mine: how you slogged through the war
in dungarees, blitzing the East Ham gasometers
with smoke-grey paint between air raids.
You’re a tiny green parrot on a tower
that any second might erupt into fire.
Yes, now I’m proud you grumbled
That Anne, she’s a bugger with them doorknobs.
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