geoff callard

Twenty Questions

I like to sit around most days, stay
in my dressing gown, load up the hash pipe.
I'm becoming more and more like my old man.
When I was a kid, I spent hours kissing
my next-door neighbour,
she was dark and plump and ten years older.
I'm most proud of pulling apart my first marriage.
Hardly any of these things are true.

My favourite colour is blue,
John Lennon my favourite Beatle.
I have his autograph on a photo taken with my mother,
creased from years forgotten in the family dresser,
tucked under the photos of my sister's father.
I'm worried that my peak is coming and I'll miss it –
I'll be in the park drinking sangria with Lou 
and he'll say,
“This is a perfect day.”
Seriously, some of these things are true.

The smell of ginger, garlic and chilli cooking
reminds me of our home.
At the stove I lift your hair to kiss the warmth of your neck,
I feel you press back against me.
When we fall asleep, I have to be touching you.
In the morning I come down the stairs while you are on your laptop.
I tell you the cat won't sleep with me when you're gone.
Too busy to look up, you say there's tea waiting in the kitchen

Then you come through and ask if I still love you.
Honestly, most of the time I tell you the truth.

The One Meaning of Light

Resting for a moment in the half-light, I get my bearings wrong. She says it’s my eyes. I say it’s the boy, he moves too fast and the path is steep. The boy turns and laughs; it is friendly, not mocking. He offers his hand to pull me back on my feet. Unsteady, I reach for her then look at the boy further up the path – the sun is behind him and he looks like an angel with the aureate light shimmering. I feel tears (not unexpected I suppose) and my companion says come on these underground chambers are something to see, there isn’t far to go. Is there light I ask. A little she says, that’s why we’re bringing our own. Like the boy's halo I say. Yes, she replies, like the boy’s halo. I am sure a look is exchanged between her and the boy. We leave the illumination of the city, light of structure, of place, light that says no one really belongs there, not even us. As we walk, I struggle to comprehend the strength of these colours. The azure sky, teal at the edges, porcelain hills powdered with streaks of yam-coloured sandstone, pine fading to sage-coloured shrub. Love is a light that is produced without heat I say. She looks at me, surprised. We used to wake up and wonder if the candles had lit themselves, she reminds me. Even now, she shines deep, like the lustrous glow of something that is really good, like leather or metal or wood that has been tenderly loved over time. We might enter the vaults; we might not. The evening shifts and fades through the pines and I know I have light enough to last me for more than a lifetime.