The flat near Longford Park
Is still a huge mystery
And got demolished shortly
After you moved.

 

You don’t remember much
About Moss Lane East
Apart from that one winter here
When the boiler kept breaking down
Reducing the window
To floods of tears.

 

You only really remember
That first spring at Barton Road
When your football smacked
Your sister that hard in the face
Your mother must have used
Twenty buckets to wash out the blood.

 

By the time your brother arrived
You had moved just up the road
And within a week of moving
Ended up going to your nana’s funeral
And didn’t stop crying during the wake.

 

Ripon Road where two of your cats
Are buried was less happy
As was Chatsworth Road
Which was opposite
Your old high school
That nearly expelled your brother.

 

Now of course
You live in a different town
With memories
Like sails in the mist
Bleeding over the sunset.

 

Etched in the past
Like closed factories

 

Windswept in a wordless language.

 

 

 

(Inspired by Paul Auster's Winter Journal)