I ‘m missing him like we miss that lost tooth
We were in the dentist’s chair
We had the anaesthetic but still felt the tug and force.
And the dentist
might have yelled,look at this,
I got it all out in one
You see,once,,the root was very twisted and tangled
I told him,take it away.
I’m missing him because his absence makes a hole
like that bloody hollow in your jaw where your tooth was
but in the soul.
And when I came home alone from the clinic
I felt that hole.The first time I had come back home
when he wasn’t here.
God doesn’t do anaesthesia, we gather
I’m missing him because he needed me so much
Now nobody needs me nor notices if I am here
Or if I fall over in the garden,will I die and rot down to the earth before
my neighbour recalls he’s not seen me for three weeks.Or maybe five.
I miss him the way you’d miss your flesh
if someone shot you with a rifle and made a tunnel through your body;
took out a lump which would hurtle away and fall to earth.
I’m missing his honey smell.
the knowledge,the feeling he had of me.
The hole in my space is almost tangible
in this room.
I wake up and wonder what he’d like to eat today.
But the dead don’t eat at our tables do they?
I remember I am alone at the table and I can eat whatever I like.
Oh,love,why did you have to go down so fast?
When you were the one ,solid I leaned on.
You were so human in my arms.
How my heart sings 