Work Text:
Don't you know there's a war on?
You put a cup of tea on the kitchen table
and you say,
“It'll be alright, love.”
Your wooden spoon oozes through sweet batter
in circles.
TV blares from next door.
A stone-faced newscaster lists more numbers.
Children killed.
Homes ruptured.
Boats stranded.
Weapons sold.
Protests crushed.
I lose myself in counting.
One two, my paces on linoleum.
One two three,
your wooden spoon up and down.
Every day a sum of a sum, and I rail
in your face,
“Don't you know there's a war on?
God’s sake, it won't work itself out this time.”
And you say,
“I didn't say it would.
I just said, it'll be alright, love.”
You're dreaming,
head in the sand, ears stuffed,
like mine are with the silt of calculated deaths.
The whole world
atomised in numbers,
all of it, crushed in iron, crumbles into numbers,
while you bake.
Don't you know there's a war on?
Sweet almond swirls and gums on your wooden spoon
in circles.
The oven clunks and hums,
the sick, sodium orange of refuge fires.
Our neighbour knocks.
Her mosque is closed today.
She tries to smile, her mouth stretches like the
thin cables
zig-zagged between black, brick walls,
our old landlines like arteries and veins
carrying
fresh life in, dead feelings out.
You tell her you've made that sticky cake she liked,
the one that
your mum passed down, and hers.
You put a cup of tea on the kitchen table
and you say,
“It'll be alright, love.”
You two start to gossip about nothing,
buses, fashion,
the cloud coming over.
You plan some time to sweep around the mosque,
you ask her
what shopping she needs this week.
She wraps her unstill fingers around yours.
She clings
like a bird on those phone wires.
You talk to her about the lapis swallows
that migrate,
bejewel the grey, English sky.
I spit, “How can you give time to tea and cake?”
And you say,
“Don't you know there's a war on?”