Cot death.

There are many things to remember – and there,
and so.
Now I lie back, I have time to remember.
I think of Keats, and amber autumn sunlight making the study a cave.
I wrote on scrolls, I stayed up until the sun stepped right round and
banged on the window to wake me up.

I also remember swimming pools – so cold I could not breathe -
and crystal glasses of Galliano, and the arid, biting-kiss of
a brown cigarette,
dust against the back of my mouth, my soft palate.
I remember deliberately grinding it out into the carpet just to see,
just to check that it was really non-flammable,
like we were told.

And I remember the grieving bluebells;
lying with you in teeming, funereal glades, with my head on your shoulder
and my pumping heart in the grass next to me,
trying to army-crawl itself away.
It would not stay with me, even though I tried to hold it there,
to keep it nestled between us, ugly and purple like a baby.
And I remember reading the engravers-gothic on the graves,
holding your hand, the brightness of the colours, and the bluebells,
and the bluebells.