First Drink

It started badly, his bulging hand,
 Gripping mine too tight
 Pulling me to the car
 Slamming the door
 Screeching on hot tyres, gravel spurting.
 Mother wringing her hands on the doorstep.

And then the pretty garden, strung about with fairy lights
 Crickets chorusing the soft air
 The tropical air.

A pink gin for him with angostura bitters,
 Gin and orange, sickly with sugar, for me
 It stings the back of my throat.

He calms with the gin,
 On the third or fourth
 I don’t say a word. 

If I could take the sting
 Out of the memories,
 That drive him back to war again and again
 To shoot it out in the wardrobe
 With a coat-hanger gun, I would.

I’m too small.

Walking back to the car
 His hand now big and soft
 Surrounds all of my small one,
 Daddy bear, baby paw
 No crushing bones now.

On the edge of the pavement
 We stare at the huge sky so full of stars.
 He asks me to imagine, just imagine
 If we weren’t here, if there was only that up there
 I try, I whirl into space
 There is only his hand.