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

when she swells

into the water

a tree

splitting to give way

to lightning

her head like god

cracking

a rock a planet a red sun

rising blood

won’t matter

frog slither neck

and shoulders

and he in the sun all kneeling
your hands full of someone
slick minute

god

when she comes

you won’t remember if she cried

because

someone is here

look

look at the day
arriving