Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

I fell down in the front yard as he was climbing the stairs to the house. He fled from the scene as if he had been responsible for it. I didn’t like it when I suddenly stopped moving, in a world that moved so fast and stupidly. Or when I became completely helpless in a world that I didn’t trust. Once I had been dragged down a road by a Christian as the neighbours rang the police. Two suspicious constables turned up. They shone torches into my eyes to see if they could bust me for drugs. Another time an old Dutch woman was yelling from the back verandah, when it happened in her flowerbed, ‘Is she on drugs or pregnant?’ Then another time I was almost raped by a middle aged businessman, who felt more comfortable fucking preschoolers or corpses, than living adult women. On this occasion, a dribble of saliva fell from the corner of my mouth. It crawled down my cheek and chin like a caterpillar. Fraser just watched from a distance. It was as if he was embarrassed and had suddenly disassociated himself from me. There was this ‘hmpf,’ of mild surprise and disbelief. As if he didn’t believe anyone unless they had enough paperwork behind them and a good lawyer. Then he went and got my neighbour, saying, ‘Hey, come and look at her.’ He stood there lighting up a smoke. My legs were bent up behind my back and my clothing dishevelled. I was still conscious but had been left in an extremely awkward physical position. I had to rely on him or someone for my movement. He showed no concern. Instead he displayed a vague curiosity and something I sensed thinly afloat in the air like spring pollen. Later I was to know that sensation as enjoyment. My neighbour seemed annoyed. ‘Fraser, what do you think you’re doing? Don’t leave her like that.’ So it was that they both carried me inside untwisting my legs. But not before Fraser had finished his cigarette. And so from this minor incident, I learnt what the major incident would be like. He was the type to run away if you had slipped into a river and were drowning. The question I then asked myself, is how could I ever make love with someone, that I knew would ultimately leave me to drown. Before I left him behind for good to drown on his own lungs from chain-smoking, I had to understand why I was leaving him. To leave him I had to understand why it was that he did the things he did. I learnt a lot about hatred by knowing him. I swam well out into the murky waters to flounder with the lunatics, derelicts and cowards. But to stay out too long would be to feel myself sink. Perhaps I was using this process as am excuse to stall. I honestly didn’t know what else to do. He was the biggest coward I knew, weak and sadistic. I didn’t want to face it about him or anyone. I wanted the world to be there for me to love and be loved from. I wanted to learn from it like a child, but instead I had to survive in it like an adult. For in this fearful shaky world, children are not so much receivers of adult knowledge and love, but survivors pursued by the great dark towers of adulthood.