Mark Czanik
Birthday
A ball of string!
That's useful you laughed
as I climbed beside you in the bed,
kicking away your good shoes.
It might have been your twenty-eighth.
I was five or six, not yet afraid of you.
I hadn't stolen anything.
A policeman wasn't waiting with you
at the bottom of the stairs.
Your wine was sleeping somewhere,
and a bike I pedalled backwards
in the shed when it rained.
The six-feet of ceiling
at the dark end of the attic
you warned me not to go,
where the floor might crack
beneath a padding of fleece,
I hadn't stepped there yet.
Page(s) 50
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