Faithless Hands

Will you?

If I die next month, will you loiter alone at the  back of the church, hands in your pockets

where my icy hands  kept warm on those cold, winter walks?  I forgot my gloves...

Will your alien form linger in pews  unused, save for the dispatching of souls and the

mismatching of lambs to the matrimonial slaughter?

Will your eyes mist over as you watch my white coffin, knowing I am inside,  shrouded in

deathly bliss, beyond your reach, your arms, your kiss?

A crumpled tissue of lies will have rendered me thus.

If I die next week, will you seek out the notice, the expected obituary and softly sigh, even

cry, shed a crocodile tear or two? Will you weep for this woman who once wept for you,

 this corpse lying in eternal peace in Mr Bradley’s cosy chapel, her hair all neatly brushed?

For never again will it spill with wild abandonment over the damp fields and the back of

your car. Will you cut out the note, and paste it hard and fast on the bedpost  of your

chaotic bachelor basement?

If I die tomorrow, will you linger outside my house?  Seemingly a stranger, a hanger-on, a

bearer of cheap petrol station flowers  which reflect nothing of the hours spent in agonising but exquisite emotional torture. Will you dare to venture inside the house of sorrows? Tomorrow never came for you and me. No future, no promise of a day to bring to fruition a pointless connection. Will you gatecrash the reception, this meeting of hungry and cynical souls, and edge gracelessly towards the edge of polite conversation?

You are unwelcome.  Shove your faithless hands deeper into those fathomless pits of your

pitiless pockets.

I died. You never came.