The World in Her Eyes
(Or: Joseema’s Orientation)

She knows a man who looks like you:
A greengrocer on Worsely Avenue.
No, she knows he’s not like you,
But quite similar — think cucumber and courgette.
Well, not so much similar, that’s incorrect;
There’s more of an air of you about him:
Lugubrious in person pod; leguminous presumed.
She’s frowning.
It’s less an air, so she thinks,
More a vague impression.

But then not really a vague impression either.

He wears a belt sometimes,
As do you.

There actually are more than one, she claims,
Who ring a bell which chimes your name,
If you would wish to nit-pick, to root among the greens,
And they are not all necessarily men, she says,
As if to rewrite the faux grocer’s agenda.

Twist his lemons.

Over there:

A queue of five strangers
Shuffling at the bus stop.
An old, white-haired woman
Wearing a hat like a cake,
Feeding the pigeons.
A group of yammering children
Weaving their way home from school —
All lackadaisical of leg, snatching satchels.

Then out of nowhere:

A serious, stoic cyclist
Streaks down Deansgate
In the draining drizzle.

They all, in truth, bear absolutely
No resemblance whatsoever to you,
Now she comes to think of it;
For Joseema sees you everywhere
Because you fill her irises to the brim;
A thousand small mentally gifted gifs of you
Play out regular matinée performances,
Displaying their frame-by-frame wares to her
As she looks at cereal packets in Tesco,
Amid the crap, cackle and pop,
Whilst smiling surreptitiously to herself.

Then again, out of nowhere:

Your reflection bounces back
Off her restless retina;
Photons flying,
Heartbeat scrying
Every single day, in some manner;
Because you burned the image
Of your face onto its surface
At the speed of flight
Long before she lost
The propinquity of your embrace;
So much sooner than the suspension
Of your lambent caresses.

An eidetic incarceration.

Branded.

I’d sue if I were her.