Cousin
I didn’t know who the call was about,
just that it was past my proper bedtime
on that surrogate school night, Sunday.
I think the grownups had still been up
because the landing light was lit for me
and it would have been dark if they were sleeping.
I hadn’t been woken by the telephone ringing,
or even the doors or footsteps – it was her
cry, the way she thrust the phone at my dad.
How she sat boneless on the stairs asking questions
she could have asked if she had stayed on the line.
From my vantage in the angle of shadows, behind the bars
of the banister rail, I heard that you had died,
hit by a car as you crossed the road with your bike.
And, once I knew for sure, I slid back into bed,
forced my eyes to close till morning,
so that, when they told me what had happened,
I might find the energy to be re-destroyed.
Matt Nicholson is a writer/performer from East Yorkshire. He’s travelled the UK reading his work and his fourth collection, Untanglement, was published by Yaffle Press in 2022. He is currently writing his next collection and performing with 3 Hull poets as The 4 Johns.