Returning to my mother’s home
                          I discover she already knows
               I am a faggot since she overheard
                           someone say it on the bus with evidence
                 that I didn’t want to sleep
      with a sex worker in Amsterdam

      The same route
                 by stout river where from
                             the window of a sports car shouts
                  POOF! and to my left a man
                                         sings IRA into tobacco tins

                                                  Where the days spent coming
                                      down in bed could make up
                          the years between us and I am sick
                                     up things I didn’t even know
               were inside me

               \

       Everybody at the pub is talking
                about their childhood and I have
                           to go it’s like being back
                in the P.E. changing room except
                                      we’re all adults and the world
                     is burning

                                      I am this person again
                          incompatible with another for
              suppressing the same potential
                         and confronted with it anew
                 at the culmination of a
     stranger’s afterparty

      \

     I have realised in reverse
                that she and I both
                            were sad and confused at the same
                time just hadn’t clocked
                                       our act of blurring from
                         and for each other

                                                That I took a loan
                                   out on myself so that
                       when the dust is swept
                                  away the broom is put back
               in the closet