Archive of a friend’s tenderness
For Luke
You made red velvet cupcakes to mark some minor victory of mine.
Without the egg and dairy, you compensated with sugar
and I think I’m still high off it now.
Though you find yourself too ill to practice that most important alchemy
– I haven’t forgotten how you held me on our living room floor
as years of pain made my face a folkmap of rivers.
I haven’t forgotten how you folded and watched over my t-shirt
and jeans, as a stream, too cold for skin to calculate overwhelms me.
I haven’t forgotten how all my medicines lead back to you.
Gregory Kearns is a poet who lives in Liverpool. He has won a Northern Writers Award as well as having been published by Bath Magg, English Heritage, and Poetry Business. He runs workplace training around neurodiversity for The Brain Charity and is a proud board member of The Writing Squad. You can find his website here.