Cai Draper
today the weather is bigger and I
wouldn’t change it. the estate agents
opposite pour their blue
light into the area and hide
in the upstairs flat. their history
is a sorry one, boring
and violent. and I’ve used them.
life is hard and look at me.
you’re dead, look at you,
laughing across bedtime
like a kid prayer. will I wash
my hair for my new therapist
or will I bring my fear along
for the ride? you’d scoff at me here
under another sky worried I’m
not doing enough even though
most people are – what? what
are most people? I have no idea.
once, I spent an entire afternoon
eviscerating an ants’ nest. once,
when my mum had me on her bike
I stuck my leg into the front wheel.
stuck in a history I feel overwhelmed by
and frozen in and like I need
to ignore, like I used to feel
about homework. it’s 8:30am
on 11/9/23 and I’ve already spent
£82.45 at Aldi. I was grateful
for the few other customers and
one of the workers let me get a trolley
without a pound coin. 35 years old
and never just asked a supermarket
worker if it was possible to free up
a trolley without a pound coin or
even a French euro or one of those
little coin-shaped keyrings.
you’re gone, proper, and I never knew
it would come at me like a superhero.
I need to reply. I need to make that
payment. I need to empty the food waste
and paint the bathroom and get that frigging
thing cleaned up. change. never
enough. too much really is
too much and not enough is not
enough. Joe’s left me a nine minute
voice note and I can’t find the gap
in the day when there’s less than
five hours until the session.
what’ll I wear? a gentle breeze
and the whole of Norfolk’s
backed up. I think I came here
for poetry but six years yesterday
I moved and now I’m not so sure.
it wasn’t an accident, more about
something like spreading the costs
and yes I changed my life but
heck they weren’t exactly
nullified. that’s the problem
with holidays. or should I say
it’s just me, here, always.
exhausting. the other day
at the beach (the beach where
we first found out you were
definitely – not just probably –
dead) I thought to myself,
he’s dead. fuck it. and I might
have shrugged my shoulders.
there is a long history of people
shrugging shoulders at the dead,
probably. what on Earth
are we supposed to do?
I hated shrugging my shoulders,
hated saying fuck it, hated
the sound of my own voice
when I first sung, as if the rain
shadow of your vanishing
wasn’t enough to bung all vents
until the end of time. and there I was
getting routines back, tucking my shirts
and walking in. a good smack
plus a pond to nurture, then jelly,
that’s what I need. to bottle it
last minute as per, like I did with the
piercing Saturday. fuck you for dying
for being so clever, so humble –
although I only ever partially believed
in your humility. I thought you just
stayed quiet until the right
moment then showed your hand
or heart, or mind, or all of it, which is
most likely what it always was.
because that’s how it felt to me –
that you meant what you said
when you were saying it
apart from when you didn’t.
CAI DRAPER is a writer from South London living in Norwich. He is the author of SPRUNG (Broken Sleep Books, 2022) and sing & hide (Bad Betty Press, 2022).