Baby's Heading Home Poem by Tim Kitchin

It's cold here in your pram
Without a blanket
Fingers folding fast before the rain
Knee to knee

Perhaps it's me
I saw your eyebrow creasing from the strain
Of vodka as you sank it
Time to go home, man

It's dark outside the van
The road is feeling rubbled
Beneath the bustle of your brain
Lurking

Shirking
The choices of the sane
The kerb is where you stumbled
You failed to decide

At a new divide
One step up
Onto the pavement
Into an imagined concrete paradise

Tarmac would be nice
The slow movement
A chance to sup,
To crest

My plastic edges against your empty breast
To know what's warm
And clean
And true

It's meant to be you
I mean.
I could have sworn
Because and lest

You cry for rest before we reach our final destination,
I squeal. I only feel elation
at the doorstep of the bedtime game
Of stories and of sandmen. You are not Mummy. Shame.