Mary Paterson

Incessant Mornings

for Rick Miller, inventor of the cardboard skeleton you can press out and assemble

Just a frill of whistling and a burning smell
and an unseen bird making something new
with the warmth of its throat. A shriek 

of parakeets arrows across the sky
and you won’t be told. I miss you I miss you I miss you
are useless words. Think of a dark room, 

single bulb, blackout curtains, clutch of other bodies,
hope-worn, desperate: I could gladly believe you were singing
miracles from the other side. I don’t know how ghosts work, 

or radios. Don’t know how clouds work,
or dry-cleaning, engines of any kind, wings, cardboard
skeletons you can press out and assemble, don’t know 

how ribs work, so fragile, so collapsed with the pressure
of a paramedic at midnight. I don’t know how birds
process time, how they pull the incessant mornings in 

with their trilling, don’t see how your mind could
have left us here day after day without you in it—you,
lace-lined with memories; you, darting, magnificent.

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Mary Paterson is a writer, artist and curator based in London. She writes mainly for performance and her work has been presented internationally including with Live Art DK (Copenhagen), Wellcome Collection (London) & Arnolfini (Bristol). Mary is the co-founder of Something Other: a platform for experimental writing and performance, which has been running since 2014. More recently turning to poetry, Mary’s poems have been published by Poetry Magazine, 3am Magazine & Poem Alone, amongst others.