You take my hand
to make me feel like I am protecting you
while you walk across a one-foot high wall.
Your body is doing all the work,
my hand could be doing anything:
learning how to make pizza dough,
sewing up the holes in your pyjama trousers,
remembering how to fold stunt paper airplanes,
picking at the scabs of when I used to hurt myself,
tracing the shape of your body
from the curls we share to the fingers
you used to take mine in your first minutes
on a wall we’re walking forever.

Carl Burkitt 2024

Written while listening to ‘Thunder Road’ by Bruce Springsteen.