Waiting without knowing

I sped through twenty years
waiting without knowing.

We exploded in a sweetie shop-
a cascade of hundreds n thousands.
She, uniformed
in a heady mix of make-up and youth,
she was
all wild perm and laughter,
and in the small weeks of spring
I learned what she had fired in me.

She was
the outlined shadow
of a nameplate on the door
of a neighbour I never saw.
She was
the unsat seat for the old and infirm
on a jampackedfull bus.
She was the lyrics I forgot,
singing to school.
She was
the unmissed sister of an only child.
She was
my dads hand
empty of a pint or a shammy.
She had been
hiding in my telly
behind every sitcom laugh I’d ever heard.

For only when she had arrived
did I discover, she was the draughtsman,
lurking with love and nature
of all the things I could not see.

She slid into the hole of my past
and gave me
retrospective emptiness

And walking with her, late one night
She gifted me a death without fear
and the warm finality of Us.