She’s sweeping the path
at the front of her house,
cheeks not quite as pink as her fleece.
Leaves sit on top of one another
like worries
she thought had gone last year.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

There was a man in the café who looked
like a bald Rick Astley. The sky was the colour
of my red jacket earlier. Mini Eggs are £1.25
this year. The pub’s book club has chosen
Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five.
It turns out the Hollies sang the song
I like in that montage in Remember the Titans
when the team go on a winning streak
and become friends. I saw a dog
that looked like a cat. Burts Crisps do
a surf and turf flavour. Dougie’s still alive.
I found my green hat. A woman I met
with your name paid £2.45 for one red pepper
from the grocer’s, she has no idea why.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

She’s walking
like she’s five minutes late for a meeting.
Every six or seven seconds, the knobbly bits
on the insides of her ankles click together
as if starting a fire. The tarmac is an airport
travelator. The moon hasn’t realised
it is morning. I hope it knows it won’t be paid
for this overtime. The woman has her phone
in her hand, her fingers thinking of an excuse
before dialling a number. A pigeon appears
on the path in front of her. It’s having
the kind of day that doesn’t need wings.
The pigeon whistles a crumb into existence
and waddles casually towards it. The woman stops.
She’s watching it be slow. 

© Carl Burkitt 2023

It seems like she enjoyed pouring me
that pint. The bubbles giggled their way
out of the tap and her shoulders laughed
at my southern accent. Certainly, Sir,
she said when I asked for dry roasted peanuts
and I wondered whose face I was
wearing. The young man with biceps
on his triceps smiled the length of the bar
and the woman curtseyed
thinking she was in my peripheral vision.
The pub was my secondary school playground
and I had a choice: wear loneliness as a crown
or bow, give a royal wave, keep my chin up. 

© Carl Burkitt 2023

I think I fancy the guy behind the bar.
The top button on his brown checked shirt
sits neatly in front of a voice box
that is asking questions his ears want
the answers to. I don’t think he likes football.
The game is on a TV behind him
and he hasn’t turned around once
to check the score or moan
that someone more talented than him
doesn’t know what he’s doing. I tell him
I have a son and he wonders what it’s like
to guide a brain through life. I tell him
it’s difficult, especially teaching him
not to confuse a stranger being polite
with absolute trust. 

© Carl Burkitt 2023

They’re slowly and systematically
picking out each other’s flaws
like snipers aiming to kill.
It’s been going on for 25 minutes
and everyone in the pub is laughing.
Their wrinkles have turned red.
Their tongues are nine pints.
They’re sat so closely to one another
on their greasy, brown leather booth
they haven’t noticed their hands are touching.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

The man with illustration-style tattoos
on his inner arm and a skin-tight woolly hat
on his head runs a spicy sauce company.
He knows how to mix jalapeños with pineapples
and habaneros with lime and mongos.
The guy standing next to him runs a curry business
that makes the tastiest onion bhajis.
I’m in front of both of them today at a food market
trying the free taster they just gave me
of their homemade Onion Bhaji Hot Sauce
We basically liquidised his onion bhajis
with a few of my chilli peppers,
says the tattooed man. It tastes like a friendship
whizzed up in a blender. I’m holding my son
wondering how to teach him to let people in.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

The people I trust are letting rubber gloved-fingers
in their mouths. We do not know this person.
They want me to go next but I can’t
stop thinking about the waiting room
and how it has everything I’ve ever wanted:
17 fake leather chairs to count, a comments
and suggestion box shaped like a classic
red post box to point at, a wall-sized
photograph of Manchester’s landscape
sort of like the sky out of our flat window,
a plastic bin just shorter than me.
The tall man who carried me up the stairs
is saying words like Filling and Extractions
and I have a sticker with a pig on it.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

and on days like yesterday
it is clearly personal. They don’t want my house
to have poached eggs in the week
and the guy behind the CCTV monitor,
the one who used to smile
when we walked into the shop,
enjoys watching me tut and gently throw
my hands in the air as the shelves I once trusted
now have bagels or multipack crisps on offer.
Everyone else knows where they’re going.
Their clean trainers and jeans fly like the crow
and collect their packs of twelve like it’s easy
and head to the frozen food or vegetables.
They talk to each other. They joke about
weekend plans and roast dinners
and I just want eggs. Half a dozen will do.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

A box of fried chicken is next to the jelly babies.
There is no way of knowing how we got here,
but you will not accept that as an answer.
And neither should you. Let’s go for a walk,
past the peanuts, the shower gel, the eggs,
the sliced bread, the row of illustrated books
and find the pieces of a story we can put together
any way we like.

© Carl Burkitt 2023