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LOBELIAS

Today you bring lobelias,
a tray of huddled buds
that we place on my balcony,
and all the flowers across Bethnal Green
in window-boxes, in pots and trays,
become a string of colourful flags.
You tell me of your travel plans
for Chile, Mexico, Peru.
I tell you that I’ll water the lobelias,
their hot orange petals,
when I return
from each day’s teaching,
from launching Oscar, Abdul, Jamila
on their accompanied journeys
home.

MEETING HER EX IN THE PARK

Her head pounds -
too much sun.

They sit on cropped lawn
that spikes her skin.

It’s been two months,
one week since he left her,

that day like a sudden storm
in the drizzly suburbs.

Now her questions
blur and buckle in the heat.

Stuck behind layers of haze,
she fingers blades of grass

while he scans the horizon,
his face flushed, as if he’s been

long-distance running.


IN A GIFT SHOP, ISLE OF WIGHT

I’m twelve years old, on holiday,
holding a bottle of sand,

naming the colours like Joseph’s coat,
pink, green, orange, red,

turning the bottle round, observing
how adjacent colours

have rasped against each other,
forming jagged seams,

how sun stripes the clear glass,
glittering the sand.

An indiscriminate, sudden sparkle -
like I imagine my teenage years will be.