Shirley

Shirley was the first to go. I think of her especially at this time of year when daffodils are at their fiercest. Shirley and I belonged to the same subset at university. Half a dozen or so of us — depending on who was hovering on the margins — brought together by last-minute cramming sessions, yawning empty days with no money, no cars, no phones, no Internet and all the claustrophobic complications of young people trying to find their place in the world.

Post-university, we scattered to different parts of the country, our contact dwindling from long letters to brief messages in Christmas cards. I settled down, had my two precious daughters in quick succession and was fully immersed in stacking plastic cups and changing nappies when one day I answered the landline and a voice from the past said, ‘Shirley’s dead.’

Shirley’s funeral took place on a searing spring day when nature was vivid with new life. It was just the two of us from our group in attendance and, like nearly everyone else, we sat there in a shared sense of almost embarrassed disbelief that cancer had outrageously taken the life of such a young woman.

Later, I wrote this poem in memory of Shirley and the life she should have had.

DAFFODILS

For Shirley

I think about you every Spring
in a half-timbered Surrey village
cradled in downland pleats of green.
An acid sun, unbearable daffodils,
milk seeping through the folds of my dress.

His comfortless thigh pressed to mine
for the last time. We swallowed the dry air,
struggling to accept you weren’t there.
Even the priest stumbled, squinting
through the hollow of your wedding ring.

I hurried back to where they waited;
my child, the sleeping baby dusted with heat,
my basket of loaves fleshily rising.
I left the secrets in the churchyard’s shade,
deep as the years growing over your grave.

Deep as the years growing over your grave,
I left the secrets in the churchyard’s shade.
My basket of loaves fleshily rising;
my child, the sleeping baby dusted with heat.
I hurried back to where they waited.

Through the hollow of your wedding ring.
Even the priest stumbled, squinting,
struggling to accept you weren’t there.
We swallowed the dry air, for the last time
his comfortless thigh pressed to mine.

Milk seeping through the folds of my dress.
An acid sun, unbearable daffodils 
cradled in downland pleats of green.
In a half-timbered Surrey village,
I think about you every Spring.