and next door s marketplace opens
out into the road the space between cars
ariot with porcelain dolls & mantel ornaments
our walk impeded by second hand sofas
& paint covered kitchen chairs
so we climb the back wall to get a better look
and thread our fingers each through
the other s our digits indistinguishable
in the time it takes to drop to the yard below
our boots stuck with sleech & snapped twigs
from the river buried long ago
you note the colour moving as we do
through bracken to pull boards
from the back entrance of the walls
which in this light appear bright sky blue
and all the window & door spaces
like doors into an elsewhere
i feel the unwelcome brush of cobwebs
the breath of accumulated moulds & lichen
the consecrated damp of the unliving
and illuminated by this thin shaft of light
we step across the threshold into a dark
where once you sat copying times tables
into an exercise book wrapped in wallpaper
i try to imagine this child you were
but can only reach that dark unknown
between your narrative & mine
through which past is caught and *then*
becomes now and abruptly the house
emerges as a picture on a slide
your *home sweet home* nailed
solid above the front door sun shining
freely through unmolested windows
i turn again to look at your face
but only see myself unrecognised in the eyes
of a child trying to remember why she left