The dawn is breaking. I am in a black-hearted place. I am standing in my darkened kitchen drinking a mug of peppermint tea. In the background that weapon of mass distraction otherwise known as the television mutters on.
I have not slept for several nights. I have not had a lengthy conversation with another human being in several weeks. I have shrunk from the world. I isolate myself, I wall myself in. Life breaks hearts and so I avoid it.
Nobby is dead. Correction: Nobby has been dead for a little oner a year now. ‘I promise I will be with you ‘till the end.’ I told him. It was a reckless promise and I never should have made it. But I cannot go back. I cannot go back. I cannot unpick the knots. On the cusp of death I abandoned him.
Come back, Nobby. Come back. I cannot accept that he is dead. I make tea and I find myself thinking, ‘I must make a cup for Nobby too.’ Or when I am out shopping: ‘I must pick up a treat for Nobby whilst I am here.’ Muscle memory carries me to the door of Nobby’s flat. Halfway across the lawn I freeze. He is not there anymore. I am left with a hollowed-out inside.
He visits me in my dreams. So often that I greet the dawn with disappointment. I don’t remember details. Just elusive images, like shards of broken glass. I try desperately to retrieve them.
I did not fully appreciate what I had until it was taken from me. I feel him like an amputated limb. I depended on him. Sometimes I felt as if he were my only friend, my only refuge in a perennially hostile world. And I know that he would have defended me to the death if the need had ever arisen.
Many spend their lives searching for heroes, for people to look up to, to explain. It must be said that there are those who look in vain and I am fortunate that, thanks to Nobby, I am not one of them. I have been blessed.
Which is why all this feels so terribly self indulgent.
Cherish what you have, while you still have it.
Check this out: War Stories
It began here: Reality Bites
Addendum: They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Does this also apply to brazen plagiarism?
Huddled Way Down Inside Myself
My first prison sentence, my first taste of blood
I should not be here, I protest, for I am no Philistine
And I pine, in isolation, for Old Masters and lyric poetry
During interrogation I perfected the art of emptiness,
Of the expressionless face, of the empty head,
Of unfamiliarity with time, with space, with a memorable place
I succeeded in my mission to remain detached,
To remain apart from my own head, from my own heart
My pain, I was told, is nothing. I am nothing
I am passive, a mere observer. I am characterless
Even to myself. Tabula rasa or terra incognito
I have no role in this story. They cannot coax it from me
So they resort to the wrack and the screw
Throwing in the a slap or two but I remain hidden
Huddled down inside myself
Wondering if I will find myself again
Rag Doll
I am a rag doll
Round-faced, beady-eyed,
Limbs flopping. I swoon
I am lifted
My full moon head
Droops forward and the child
That real, solid, flesh-and-blood child
Who held me in her arms
And screamed for me
From Harrods to Hamleys to village toy shop
From jumble to charity shop to car boot sale
To this small
Sobbing child
Who holds me to her
Who rocks me
She will be the one
Who will take me home
Who will cling to me
After her mother
Tucks us in at night
She will hold me tight
As she murmurs and shifts in sleep
She will never let me go
The Day that Everything Changed
On the day that everything changed
Your plumage and your feathers
Artfully arranged. Some
Might say, ‘You’re really quite
Deranged.’ We are unlikely
Bedfellows. You, brave soldier
Me, a pale, dull, nobody
But that old Matchmaker
He knows, he knows. I had
My first taste of you
On our wedding night
We did everything right
We treated onlookers
To the long-awaited sight
Of the bloodstained bed sheet
A sign of the consummation
Of our day old marriage
Becoming a fragment of history
With no patience for sensibility
Only for the preservation
Of the purity of the lineage
As soon as our honeymoon
Is over, you are off to war
I am left behind and my distress
Is amplified by a hundred servants
And my maid, a soothsayer,
Or so she claims, can sense
A new life flourishing inside me
Feral Cats
This family
Of feral cats,
insouciant
Seeking shelter
From a sudden
eruption of hailstone
Golden eyes
Shining out
Of a damp, dark
Hiding place
Invisible to
The human eye
So Sick of Drowning 
