Literary Practice exercise: apology beginning with word 'no'....

No words can ever express my –

My beginning of a perfect lie –

My shock and shame and salty shimmer,

Glimmer-glam for alibi.

`

For it became the bluebell sky

To open bliss inside his eye

The birds ran through and through and then we saw,

And soar, up, up, astral trees, infinities and mutual clouds,

Striking stars, inside, between, beyond, soft, rainbows –

And to look away, sniff and scuff on carpeted floor

Re-arrange our photographs, our gas-bills and shrouds.

`

You wait for him at the end of the aisles,

Shooting white fire through a Fairy-Queen dress,

Shaking black silence in suited distress.

You’ve suffered together the generation miles,

The shouting, the scrimping, the supermarket stress,

The albums, the annuals, the family mess,

The sweat and the screams and the midwifes’ smiles.

`

A hand on my shoulder

As you pause at home

Foetal, alone

Baggy, waiting, older

Like that hand that leaves my shoulder

And plaits your hair in the kitchen, by the fridge-magnets, just like he always did.

`

You loved him well and warm and wry

I leave my shame and turn and fly