Angela Kirby
Instead of a valentine
I send you this photograph which is creased
and crumbling at the edges, being a little more
than forty years old, but pay no attention to that.
Look at the girl on your arm - she is still smiling,
still hopeful and high on something
that her mother gave her to stop the nausea,
something pink and salty, not unpleasant at all,
she thought, but afterwards the day became misty
and drifted away from her as she tried to pin it down.
She floated in scented bath-water, dived headlong
into white waves of tulle and finned uncertainly
through a crystal reef of chandeliers. Some drops
splashed upwards and fanned into a tiara, but one,
just one, trickled down to the third finger of her left hand
and settled there where the goldfish chased its tail.
The music was loud, there were too many people,
and the scent of roses, stephanotis and lilies
was overpowering, don't you remember?
and crumbling at the edges, being a little more
than forty years old, but pay no attention to that.
Look at the girl on your arm - she is still smiling,
still hopeful and high on something
that her mother gave her to stop the nausea,
something pink and salty, not unpleasant at all,
she thought, but afterwards the day became misty
and drifted away from her as she tried to pin it down.
She floated in scented bath-water, dived headlong
into white waves of tulle and finned uncertainly
through a crystal reef of chandeliers. Some drops
splashed upwards and fanned into a tiara, but one,
just one, trickled down to the third finger of her left hand
and settled there where the goldfish chased its tail.
The music was loud, there were too many people,
and the scent of roses, stephanotis and lilies
was overpowering, don't you remember?
Angela Kirby is taking a D Phil in Education and Creative Writing at Sussex University. Shoestring Press is bringing out a collection of her poems next year.
Page(s) 79
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