Swash
Telling the Underground
Witness to Marriage
At the same time each morning,
I wake noticing words from get well soon cards
blowing over my body. Then my wife walks
me to the portrait.
A couple stand to attention,
two kids lie flat, sand covers their shoulders.
She calls me the salt scent in their skin, asks me
to hone in on their shoals of hair, sea walls of teeth,
any kind surf
to submerge my memory in.
I nod, it keeps us warm,
but I don’t remember anyone.
The uprush and the backwash
haven’t left a thing.
It’s Friday and the riders are shoulder to shoulder,
inch worming their ways off the
line. You sit tight. Sunken in the nook of your seat,
gem red pleats from your dress pour over
your lifeless friend like water. A complex
equation on your forehead, tears
that might wake the dead
slide down a cheek, your coat efficient,
distracting and covering his chest, he doesn’t stir.
The scene is too deliberate. Your beauty summers
as we winter, all dull edges and scabbing monotony. At Kings Cross
I depart in every direction. Nothing is still,
a heavy book closes your name.
Alone between the bunting,
youth's echo shone
through the pleats of a wedding dress, hung,
lone mast, dead centre of a theatre hall
gaffed wide to hold royalists
cheering rule Britannia in their plastic Harry and Megan masks.
The veil was split, you nodded when she asked “was it just the once?”
It wasn’t, you just don’t mention the other one, hanging in a wardrobe.
Life’s a glass of red spilt in youth, best disguised with a bouquet.
Time took its path across those two dresses. All day,
the only words I heard you say were 'oh yes, I was a size twenty-four waist'
and the dress didn’t move,
it hovered at the entrance, blocking the path of forgotten,
nobody brought a camera,
you plead your wardrobe rings the bells.
Imran Khan received his degree from SOAS and teaches creative writing around South West England. His work has recently appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Puritan, Across the Margin, The Smart Set, The Lake and elsewhere. Khan is a previous winner of the Thomas Hardy Award. He can be found at: https://www.facebook.com/ImranBoeKhan/
