Going South To Morden
There’s a doll’s house-sized grief
when I read a book and add a character
to my list of favourite names,
then remember that I’ll never need it now.
I’m as eggless as a vegan cooked breakfast,
I’m a photocopier out of toner,
my tubes are jestered with the effort
of forcing out the last centimetre of toothpaste.
When I went for a smear, the nurse confirmed
it’s a perishing hot water bottle down there.
The celebrities who die on the News at Ten
are no longer Brylcreemed and black and white.
Increasingly aware of the direction of travel,
I’m on the last train out of here,
already at Clapham North, I’ll never see
Charing Cross again and outside the window
there’s just my own reflection and then the black.
Melanie Branton has two collections: Can You See Where I’m Coming From? (Burning Eye, 2018) and My Cloth-Eared Heart (Oversteps, 2017). Her work has been published in journals including Ink, Sweat & Tears, Bare Fiction and London Grip. melaniebranton.wordpress.com