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

That year Mum must've been in a state.
She hadn't had time to wrap Dad's present
or show it to me first like she normally did,
but my nine-year-old eyes thought little of it.
The three of us stood there in the kitchen, Dad
slowly opening the bright bag with curious fingers,
Mum tapping her fingernails on the formica in a silence
that lasted a second too long for comfort.

We knew from the insignia on the plastic carrier
that it was something culinary. Dad, of course,
had been a chef when they met, trained for ages
in the West End's best places, owned his own restaurant
for years. But by now he'd stopped cooking,
bored with the whole business, and just nothing
could get his mouth watering. Later, he called it a phase;
at the time, Mum thought it was for good, and there was nothing
she wouldn't try, nothing she wouldn't buy with the little they had
to get him back to who he'd been. It was an odd-looking thing,

like a frying pan, except flat, heavy, with a thick base.
For a moment, it was so unexpected that it didn't have a name;
Dad looked strange. "A griddle?" he chuckled.
Incredulity raised his eyebrows and Mum's nails fell silent
as he said he'd probably never use it, then tried to defuse it
by laughing. But it was too late, she left the room,
saying how she couldn't seem to get anything right.

The next morning they were to be seen in the kitchen again,
their hands almost touching on the griddle's plastic handle,
working together in a silence of communication
to knock up the best full English breakfast I'd ever eaten.
They wore it out in the end, this gift of Mum's
Dad said he'd never use. But they didn't replace it.