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   AZRAEL   at the age you are now your father’s body had built a nest for an angel   you    key stage two    couldn’t place why he coughed wingbeats    cried shameless   the year wisemen saw the stowaway photobomber in a radio wave   today   tapping forty   your neck convexes you bookmark testaments   nothing makes sense like a toddler walking around with your face hurling a sippy cup at the wall   this summer we’re home braising our skirting boards and the bees are brave   buzzing thickets comfort crushed shale into shade and you run to remember not all angels are hereditary   in one version god drops a leaf and seven billion eyes read your name   forty days later a test card   this summer we cling to our tvs like gastropods on a rock the land before time​ washes up on netflix   little foot’s mum is dead like simba’s dad is dead like bambi’s mum is dead like bastian’s mum is dead   if this is how we level up to protagonist you’d rather swim in the shadow of a demiurge   you swing your daughter dizzy in the garden to remember not all childhoods are hereditary   at the age you first met memory she spies her shadow   takes it everywhere   but watches mama dinosaur die dry eyed while you break on the black friday couch   four thousand wings trying you on for size wonder why your kid’s hypothetical loss stings   sharper than your lived one you ask your mother   she says when the angel came she couldn’t look directly at your grief   a wooden doll inside hers   you say kids are resilient   you were ok   she says you weren’t though   were you     T MINUS ZERO   it won’t matter if the water is hot or cold it won’t matter about the plastic tub for the placenta or which pyjamas when you lie on a floor next to the lift trolleys splash rocky down corridors each   contraction a red sun setting over and in you   rise out of water his eyes catching you falling into the room