Thursdays Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Thursdays
No more Thursday meetings
No more fleeting catch-ups
No more sticking plasters
Stuck on our fractured family

This Thursday, every Thursday now
You will not twist your hair till it bleeds
Or tear the yellow craters of your sores
As I play mother in our restaurant
Putting food on your plate
In your belly
Our snatched, pretend normality

Always, pizza and pasta
Tea with 6 twists of sugar
Your crumpled sachets strewn across the table
A blizzard of white

Why didn't I notice how thin you'd grown
My handsome bundle of bones?
Your pupils, two black moons
Eyes, underlined with blue.

Unstoppable, fate roared down like a torrent
Of fire and ice, like a thunderbolt
As if you were the branch and I the tree
When Thor the thunder god
Hacked you off from my heart