It’s not every day you meet someone with the same name as a mythical figure from the legend of King Arthur. But here you are, fake burger cheese yellow t-shirt and baggy blue tracksuit bottoms, holding a softball bat. Wikipedia says your namesake is best known as a magic man. It’s not until after you strike the ball that I’m told you are blind. In the pub, you tell me you enjoy working for the charity between bites of pork scratchings and taking the piss out of my pitching arm.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

I catch myself thinking about you at night, and the way you remember the key moments of people in your life. The way you celebrate their achievements. The way you give any room what it wants; light, dark, finger food, a performance. You’re holding a can of IPA in a kitchen neither of us own, listing the things you think you are made of: red blots on cheeks, t-shirts that don’t fit, hair that won’t stop receding. I catch myself thinking about you at night, and the way your beard is a nest for anyone who needs a safe place to rest.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

Every Tuesday, two or three or four or five of you sit across two or three or four or five separate tables to tackle the quiz in the back of the paper I’ve never seen the name of. Incorrect answers bounce around the room like a squash ball wondering where to go. Natalie Imbruglia. Chairman Mao. Death of a Salesman. Jaffa Cakes. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The hunt for double figure points remains alive, the sound of laughter to every failure keeps you coming back, the chance for something to talk about.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

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