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And the night John Berger died, I, Maria, pale shadow, the youngest sister of Sabine, was walking the city And the gallery stayed open late for the last hours of Abstract Expressionism And I ducked into a bookshop to take a call, then stayed for two more hours, browsing And bought a copy of Float by Anne Carson, which I had seen at a friend’s place the night prior And with it bought a book I already had, as homage to a writer I desire And knowing she will never know And read the opening of the white copy with the blue writing of Secondhand Time And could not carry it with me And walked back the way I had come And remembered the boys and men I have kissed, standing on Hungerford Bridge And under the bridge And by the river And again And inside nothing And looked at the neon reflections And saw the buses and cars float over the Thames, while couples embraced below And retraced my steps to a hotel room, where the lights around the mirror make me look dirt pretty And the intimacy kit costs £20 And thought of Sabine, and the tits-out girl she used to be And her men in my hands, on her pages, brown-skinned, their taste And now And a mother of three, the number announces her wealth in her class And value And began to feel grown-up and older And believe I have never known her And care less about her And hurt at the thought life cannot fix death And is it enough to say I am? And I spy And patterns repeating And her children grow up And the dark river shivers next to the lights of the city, tiger stripes on water And inky black but working in pencil And this brings its own temptation for erasure And the mark of resistance And love the possibility of erasure And hurt for the house of love And hate brown bruises more than black hair And cut out pink shapes and pin them to canvas And drink