Tetris
We’re there on the midnight pavement with the amps
and the guitars, the kit and the cables, remember, you
and Drew and Tom and James and me, after that gig—
instead of the bus the taxi driver turns up in this car
like your mum’s and somehow, and we’ll never know
how, he fits us all in –like Tetris, we said later– hefts in
the amps, threads the guitars through, props drums on
laps and drives us home like that, laughing and jammed
smokesweaty and snarled up in leads and Lancaster and
the love of it. It was 1998, summer, James would not die
for two years, and we lived crammed full, ears ringing
with silver and the last chord, all of us falling into place.
Nia Broomhall is about to finish her MA in Creative Writing with Lancaster University. She is Head of English at a comprehensive school. Nia has recently been published in Magma and was Highly Commended in the Winchester Poetry Prize 2022.