currently unfinished poem - jody

Jody

Simon walks Manchester biography. Photographs
leaf season clusters and portraits of buildings.
The broken bits, the worn - elbows, feet,
neck. Or films the unregarded slowed
so movement breathes. Her face is nowhere still.

He’s dreamt arguments with other women - What
can I do if you won’t tell me? I’m not psychic.
He’s heard voices never hers. The banister,
carpet, steps, skirting, wallpaper, grime
where she left don’t smell any more. Too solid.

17 November - It’s two years now.
I was looking back at my journal. Right after
she vanished I wrote ‘Our relationship was always
loss, now she’s fulfilled it. I don’t want
the scratches on my leg to heal’. Mostly true
but too articulate. I was suspicious of myself.

Through her teens to the year after they met
at twenty three, she’d cut her calf, ankle,
knee. Walked with a cane, slowly. She could dance
until it hurt too much. Then she’d sit
in the music dark and talk to people. Simon
worried. They didn’t photograph each other.

He found imprints of her face and hands all over.
Become her image. He was archaeology.

Another piece for the MA. A little more work to go until it's complete and ready to be edited. It does allude to some other poems and prose pieces as part of a sequence, but it's also intended to stand alone. The main doubt is that it's a very conventional piece. Let me know what you think.

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