Day: August 23, 2022

For Asha

“In five years, I will meet
strangers who wear my words as talismans, 
and those that cast my tales as anchor or sail-
I will cram ten lifetimes into five years 
brimming with laughter and rhythm and kindness, 
and my factory violin, sticky with rosin, chin rest 
fastened by lurid purple tape, 
will consume the cadence 
dormant in my bones so
in five years I will sit in the Gaelic club and over too many 
half spilled pints play a fiddle reel 
to time…

And in five years, Asha’s van will be a lighthouse, 
smithing journeylines into reclaimed 
carbon, metal, and stone.
Holly will have her pick of Othellos/but Mia will be her own Portia 
Kat K will travel lightly/but Gin will travel with abandon
and Nadia will speak sound into undulating air 
from the back room of a sanctuary
for animals saved from slaughter-
and why not include your friends 
in a five-year plan, though there is no
career enhancing movement
no property ladder on which to 
teeter dangerously.”

In the end I look at the doctor
measuring my meandering mind 
against standardised norms. 
“No,” I reply. “I have no five-year plan.”