Heather

I look for you, Heather, amongst the new faces. I look for your shining hair and your milky smell. I look for you amonst piles of books. I can't seem to find you anywhere. I send off for you using coupons on the backs of magazines but with no reply. I look for you in the bin and behind the hard-backed cupboard that you used to lean against.

I look for you under the hymn books and the empty mugs. I search for you entwined in small shreds of hair that hide in corners. Under the chairs and in the vestry, I'm still looking. I want to find you in children's faces and fairy tales. I lost you amongst the voices and in the heat of the August sun. I lost you under the mottled greens of a warm evening. I see a morsel of sound flick through the air and think it is you but I am mistaken. I watch acid burn in test-tubes and wonder if it is your voice.

I look for you, Heather, under the dusty cover of an ancient typewriter, seeing the words you used to say printed out on a tea-stained page. I hear your laughter in the dry leaves that crinkle-divine. I thought I saw your reflection in tea-leaves today.

I talk to your empty chair at seven thirty a.m. I rock your chair back and forth and look at the place where you held your hands in your lap and brought me tea. Your laughter still bounces off the walls, Heather.

I caught sight of your face in the handle of a door, Heather. I watched it flicker. I held onto it, as if it were your hand. I dance down corridors, wanting it to be how it was. You've been gone for over a year now, Heather. You've taken away the youth of this place. I looked for you in the dust, Heather and inhaled you just a tiny bit at a time.

For Heather.