Gonegirl

 

Gonegirl

 

1991, Prom, girl gone.

Came home, something wrong

and his small flat, empty, cold,

on the hob a stew grows mold.

Two children clung, each holding

tight to his opposable hands

while wanton Winter cruel blows

like ice across the empty land.

Shivering while their questions flow

that cannot be ever answered,

and he sees no reasons,

because there are no reasons.

Just a stale trail of breadcrumbs,

inside his head, a drum thrums

and reeling left feeling numb,

until blood like percussion comes.

Someone left she’d called Bruce,

he’d met him once, twice, called truce,

a pax, had told him there’s no use

in facile sulking, had spoken truths;

arranged marriage gone south.

Or Dave, yes that was it, a mouth

set by permafrost into frigid lines:

how he’d begged her for more time,

had sobbed, cracks in his shades,

cracks in his face, cracks in façades

of the walls of his place. Girl lost.

Now, finally his turn, come to pass,

possibly it always had been this,

but, oh, how such pain would last,

walking amongst the living, dead,

thoughts of horror in his head;

he flamed like nitrogen for years,

and it left him with forever scars,

asked himself that question, why,

sought high and low for her reply,

in places where doubt multiplied.

They sometimes kept in touch,

and he only asked her this much,

she dyed his grey, withered his bloom

but her lips were sealed like tombs,

to ‘when will it be, will it be soon’?

No answer ever would be uttered;

by degrees hearts ceased to flutter,

then hearing from a friend one day

where he was now living far away,

she’d rolled her car over on a motorway,

and while he continued growing older,

could only offer a hard shoulder.