John Stammers, final lines to Mary Brunton

Like A Heatwave Burning

It was the hottest summer on record; we flew into rages at the drop of a pin. The heat made cacti of us all.

I woke up hot crazy at one in the morning. The day’s sun had heated up the sky so heavy it felt like being ironed.

We sat on the curbside like hot bananas and Jane read me the Miranda of our future lives together:

there would be no future lives together. I’d never heard the nightjay squawk so damnably shrilly in the still, still stilly.

My eyeballs made sinuous rills. I sloughed on my sandals and loped onto a streetcar named expire.

Tyres welded cars to the road. I got out my character and began the tasks of a lifetime.

Pine trees collapsed in a dead swoon all over the place. Believe you me, honeydew features, it was hot.

The planes bound for all points everywhere etch lines on my office window. From the top floor London recedes in all directions, and beyond: the world with its teeming hearts.

I am still, you move, I am a point of reference on a map; I am at zero meridian as you consume the longitudes. The pact we made to read our farewells exactly at two in the afternoon with you in the air holds me like a heavy winter coat.

Your unopened letter is in my pocket, beating.

and so you are changed to me and I to you, the way that creases remain always in a sheet of paper that has once been folded.