Like children playing together

We were immersed in technicolour glee

Joyous laughter bursting the oval blue capsule lodged in my throat:
My voice casket could have been a blue egg with a toy inside.
It cracked open and I playfully shrieked, demanding you push me higher on the swing.
Joy and fear became one:
Their vacillating union morphed into an adorable cherub with inconceivable power.

You understood technicolour glee even though

Yours was the era of the faded, two-hued photo.
Imprisoned in sepia, familiar strangers
Eyes hollow and resolute
Barely breathing in starched Sunday best,
Ignorant of momentary death.

I never saw such a picture of you.

We were too poor then.
Could it be that your technicolour glee
Lived only because
Part of you had never drowned
In the muddy depths of one of those photographs?

We were children playing.

My cherub’s arrow pierced
The membrane that had imprisoned you.
Now free, running like an escaped prisoner running because he can.
You prepared to take flight on the merry-go-round swing
My voice suspended as your feet lifted off the ground.

The shrill laughter of boys at the scene, scruffy faces, oafish stares
Their irritating presence, like tick boxes on government forms I dread.
Joy and fear jump apart
Like teenagers caught in the act.
Cherub power becomes
Arrows turning inward, pain, the power to pierce.
My voice leaps back into its casket.

The blue egg that holds my voice is

Humpty Dumpty resurrected
Endlessly sitting on a wall and having a great fall.
Such memories are self-healing.
Memories that stir like dog dreaming of running in an endless meadow, restless
Impervious to capture.
We lived. We live.