ANDREW
is the first of your boyfriends that
I have liked—sorry. We spend the morning
hungover, trying to find the car, treading
water on that old stretch of dock as
I wonder why ever I dreaded anything.
It’s the first full sunny day of this young
year, here where the blank light falls
onto the still Mersey, the city, the
ferry in between, and the iron men
up at Crosby, staring quietly across
to Wales. They just can’t stop looking out
across the water, eight days a week.
We sit among them as Doyle drags
on a blunt, sand settling into our gin.
Later, you will tell me how he makes you
feel, how it bubbles away under the
noise of the TV, thuds and blinks somewhere
beyond the beat of a dancefloor (I’m there
too, trying to keep up—pissed, lost, falling
behind as time seems to slow, with youse two
turned all the way up, off on one, half-gone:
a George I may be, but never a John),
but the feeling is tangible, there, solid
in every wink and glance: advancing
without alarm, the sudden nothing of
feeling OK, with yourself, with being
gay, a weight off, a worry ticked and crossed.
We find the car as the cathedral (one
of two) sits watching, its brick shoulders up
in a shrug, perched there atop its rock.
Andrew sighs, ‘I love that building.’
‘And I love you,’ you say.
– Joseph Birdsey
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joseph Birdsey is a writer and photographer who lives and works in London. He studied English at Goldsmiths, University of London, graduating in 2012. His poems have been published in ‘Myths of the Near Future’ (NAWE Young Writers’ Hub), Porridge Magazine, and by The Poetry Society’s Young Poets Network. He tweets as @flaregun.