Delivered

Through mile after mile and traffic
I delivered her things –
those things I’d salvaged from our wreck
a long year since.
Weird upon weird, hot metal, cold rain,
and driven on – aye aye aye – and on.
Delivered in the darkening dreich
of a poorly auspiced autumn’s day.

The debris was delivered / handed over at the kerb
in a briefest encounter / of deepest mistake:
brushed past, brushing off, and then gone
in diesel fumes:  we’d thought that it was good.

Complex people speaking simple words  –
her face now bare, mine fully bearded –
dressed differently, too sensitive and
not making sense, except in enmity;
poles apart / magnetically opposed,
trapped by the past / by actions past sense,
badly drawn and badly done and maladroit.
Appearances notwithstanding.

Restless and headstrong, headstrong controller,
our story shared / of pain and loss and axes of hostility
ended with an axe of iron / hewn into my soul:
AND STILL WRONG!

I did my best.  By God, I did my best.
In the face, the teeth, of withheld thanks.
Never-thanked / and then sucked dry.
Not that it matters now.
Now I’ve reached that journey’s end,
a necessary ending for that state, of those affairs:
I’ve demonised the person / I’d consorted with.
Debris delivered.   Free at last.