the old spiral staircase they painted white and made a statement feature of the new build / the beautiful girls who hold you still as they zip up your backpack / the maths lesson paracetamol flaking and caking the bumps on the back of your tongue / the doorstep in winter and the silhouette of someone asking you something / the stranger in a blazer and the stacks of DVDs that form an impenetrable castle of love / the parachute and the rhubarb-and-custards and the not wanting to come but getting the party bag anyway / the mouse that runs over your foot, the mouse playing dead on your brother’s stomach / the kicking and the plate spinning and the doorstep in spring now, still chilly / the first time you see the word suicide, biro-scrawled on a back page by a girl in fingerless gloves, not yet a cliché / years later, the soft shut cabinets in a house that isn’t yours / the woman dressed as a prisoner, calling your name from the club toilets like Eurydice / the coatrack goodbye from someone’s best friend’s child’s birthday / the harmless man with hands the size of your head / the 11am melatonin and the spider in the mouse trap, pincers scooping poisoned peanut butter / the doorstep in summer, the door the wrong colour / the crack of cranium on ceramic in the empty flat’s locked bathroom / the kiss on your forehead that unhinges its jaw and washes you down with ketchup / the UFO cresting the hill where you last played make-believe and actually believed it / the screams of your father drowned out by a cartoonish south westerly wind / the ghost rattling your bones, getting ready for his big debut / practice practice practice, makes