I will talk about shock and anger and point my finger at you until it breaks. I will talk about pulling socks up, getting on with it, try trying harder. I will talk about distance, unmade phone calls, could’ve tried harder. I will talk about statistics, inevitabilities, didn’t stand a chance. I will talk about wooden beams, tied knots, got to think kinder. I will talk about your record collection, your fluorescent running jacket, the skin on your shoulders. I will talk about souls and selflessness and carrying you in my fingertips.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

You’re in front of me. I can taste battered sausage on your breath. Your shoulders are too wide to see a way out of the school gate. Your chain sits around your neck. I’m close enough to see it is fake gold and not the fallen teeth of other kids in my year group. It doesn’t matter I’m your brother’s mate, I stood too close to him earlier and I should’ve known better. I can’t stop looking at your chest hair. Where did you get them from?

© Carl Burkitt 2022

Her tongue is a beak, pecking at the crumbs of the mistakes she sees. Arrive late. Peck. Forgot my book. Peck. Poor grammar. Peck. Untucked shirt. Peck. Looking the wrong way. Peck. The skin of my torso tightens, ribs forget the are there to protect me. Peck. Talking too much. Peck. I didn’t say anything. Peck. Get out and stay out.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

There’s a picture of you holding me in your arms. I can’t be bigger than one of your RAF boots, the ones as polished as your Brylcreemed head. It’s nice knowing the baby ears in that photo heard your voice. Perhaps it talked to them about Yorkshire puddings or where made the best beer: Malta, Singapore, or Beverley. Perhaps they told me to stop crying or whispered Everything will be OK.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

There’s a post-box outside my block of flats with two letter holes. It’s the double-width kind like the one you leap frogged with no hands outside my Uni accommodation. You flew over it so easily, the drunk man who bet you couldn’t gave me 20 quid and said, He’s the coolest guy I’ve ever met. Do you remember hiding in the loo at that house party to sellotape our feet to our faces when those women wanted to kiss us?

© Carl Burkitt 2022

Driving past the turnoff to your cul-de-sac, I can still feel the box of Roses in my sweaty, eight-year-old hands. The chocolates cost me about one million pounds. How many cars must I have washed? I sat in my room for 50 years after sprinting from your front door thinking of you nibbling a Golden Barrel like a squirrel, waiting for Sunday to end. It’s Monday, and I hear you say my name from behind a tree in the playground telling your friends you Prefer Quality Street. You. Said. My. Name.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

He’s perched on a car seat with a finger up his nose, the crumbs of fallen Pom Bear arms and legs are dotted around him like chips across a Scottish beach. Snot sits on cheeks built by experts. He sees a green tractor and demands a yellow tractor, a red tractor, a blue tractor, a yellow tractor, a red tractor, a blue tractor. The letters for Please forget how to form an orderly queue. His eyes fill the rear-view mirror, the source of the River Tay: gentle, powerful.

© Carl Burkitt 2022