Frαction /

I opened the bathroom door

and you were there

on the landing,

downlit by the two/eighths of the bulbs 

that still worked.


We stood and read each other in the half/light.

A caesura on the line of carpet

cut by a cough.


You were seven and three/quarters

and at that age

where the lengthening fringe

was a sign of your slow withdrawal 

from the light of childhood.


That age that sees the hardening of the soft edges

of heel and knee and heart.


I saw myself in your eyes,

doubled and reduced to the size of a pupil

and wondered 

How much of you was me?

How much of you was her?


‘Can we have a chat?’ you said,

pulling your hair over your eyes,

seeing if it would reach your nose.


We lay on the thin pillows

on your bottom bunk

staring up at the glow-in-the dark planets

you had put on

two/seventeenths of the wooden slats

above.


‘What are fractions?’ you asked


I was stuck,

like when you asked me if germs had minds

or if 

a

feather 

was 

heavy 

enough 

to 

fall 

through 

a 

cloud.


Night time brought out the porosity in you,

an urge to fight the void of curfews with questions.


The wait for answers

always made your mouth open,

the two/twentieths of your new teeth

askew

like old headstones twisted from their symmetry 

by the roots of the churchyard oak.


‘Fractions are a piece,’ I said

‘when a whole is broken into pieces’.


The coughing began again

in the bedroom beyond us.



‘Is heartbreak a fraction?’ you asked.