Things I’ll Send

by HATTIE CRISELL

I keep a list for later: things I’ll send.
Just normal things—a recipe I found
with aubergine, which looked your sort of thing;
that awful photo from your wedding day,
in which I blinked and look like I’m asleep;
a sudden thought: Remember when you got
inside a duvet cover, shouted BOO?
The world’s most stupid ghost—I laughed for hours.
On normal days these things keep up the tune
of twenty years of friendship, me and you,
and yet to send them now would be absurd:
a requiem on keytar and kazoo.

Your grief has muted joy, so I send flowers:
they don’t know us and have no song to sing.

Ω

Hattie Crisell is a British journalist based in London. She has written for The New York Times, New York magazine, Vogue, The Times of London and others. She hosts the podcast In Writing with Hattie Crisell, a series of interviews about the writing process, and is currently on the creative writing MA program at Birkbeck University.