When it comes to you

It's all in the details

It's ingrained into the melodies

Of the CD I no longer play

But which used to hum

The words of a mainstream world

Into the deafening obscurity

Of our routines

It is in the way the vicar's stammer coughed

Across your name

When he prayed

And the way that every stranger we knew

Offered me condolences like they were condiments

And that my friends were rocking chairs

which heaved from one extreme to the other:

Enforcing an aura made of egg shells upon me

And then spearing it open

With the unconsideredness of their years

Because their relationship with time and space

Was one that did not feature a brother

Who ignored every lifejacket thrown

It is in the way that some indented kid

Was watching The Hunger Games in the background

While they explained to us the necessity

Of naso-gastric tubing

And the way that I thought more about

The way I recognised the music of the tribute's parade

From somewhere unplacable

Than I did about the idea that a tube would slice

Away another piece of your human dignity

Like cheese wire

And it is the exact peculiarity

Of the position you acquired when you rocked

And shook on the floor

And the melting-clocks surrealism,

The time suspension, of my big brother

Being foetal

It is in the way that the heart monitor read 27

And the way the paramedics wished us luck

When they stole you into an ambulance

With your tin-foil lunch

Unyeildingly distant from your stomach

And how I watched you

Attempt to stand and protest that there was nothing wrong

With the creeping audacity to feel hungry

To feel sorry for myself

Because in that precise moment

I knew that I had been loosed

All rugs had been levered out from under me

The sky pieced itself around

On the trampled floor

I stood in a hospital garden

Made of glass scafolding

And jellied legs

And dialled deep

Into a world of quick-fire cross-draw signal

In the hope that a solution

Was hung out for me on teh other end of the line