Afternooning
by Teya-Jean Bawden
It was the spotted patchy grass, rotting, then
A battle against bracken, and thickets dense,
But one stream, a reward in peaty mud,
Through the drecht woods by mine
We walked in together.
You knew the path; you’d walked it more
Always barefoot, unnecessary, but ‘closer to nature’,
For all the thorns you’d pick out your feet,
Maybe it was sort of erotic -
Squishy mud between toes.
I wasn’t brave, my wellies welched my boredom
When I wanted to go and watch telly,
But you were adamant to stay, pathetic really,
Clinging to afternoons like lonely suns,
Jeremy Kyle was on.
But once we heard a stag, only seeing
Its antlers thrust through the thicket in Spring
And I whispered that Dad had shot one before,
Butchering it in the bathroom because
Blood wipes off tiles.
Or that time we saw a couple fucking,
Their pimpled flesh a mismatched patchwork against pine
And I asked you quietly, in the rain,
If you knew what love was?
And you replied ‘No.’
A battle against bracken, and thickets dense,
But one stream, a reward in peaty mud,
Through the drecht woods by mine
We walked in together.
You knew the path; you’d walked it more
Always barefoot, unnecessary, but ‘closer to nature’,
For all the thorns you’d pick out your feet,
Maybe it was sort of erotic -
Squishy mud between toes.
I wasn’t brave, my wellies welched my boredom
When I wanted to go and watch telly,
But you were adamant to stay, pathetic really,
Clinging to afternoons like lonely suns,
Jeremy Kyle was on.
But once we heard a stag, only seeing
Its antlers thrust through the thicket in Spring
And I whispered that Dad had shot one before,
Butchering it in the bathroom because
Blood wipes off tiles.
Or that time we saw a couple fucking,
Their pimpled flesh a mismatched patchwork against pine
And I asked you quietly, in the rain,
If you knew what love was?
And you replied ‘No.’
Photography by Rebecca Brown.
©' The Treacle Well 2013