Your heart will harden

Looking at fields, makes me feel roast full,
I think, thighs pressed against ice porcelain
in the toilets of a pub in Victoria.
The girl in the next cubicle is staccato sobbing into her phone
that her best friend is kissing her boyfriend,
that her family are always angry,
that there isn’t enough money,
and Christmas is coming,
and she wants a pillow to hold her head,
to leave an indent of the facts of her skull contents.

I am full of fields and I want to tell her, that this will get better.
I want to stand one foot on either side of the urinal,
lean over the plaster board and tell her that hearts harden,
that the precision of ache will dull to skin drums,
that you can do pulmonary bakes for conker competitions,
inject it with cement to make it win ‘being better’ awards,
that feeling things too keenly is the temporary sting of finger tipping
the frank triangular face of the iron.

I want to tell her that there will be systems of strings of pylons of resilience,
that it won’t matter if John does not come to her 30th,
if no one rings on the day of your promotion,
if your family never come to stay
if you meet people in the street and they look like they want to get away.

The surprise at the way clefts of birds angle down into fields
like lead filings will stop catching your breath
under your rib cage like a plastic bag in an orchard.

She and I will stand over the toffee pan,
aprons on, wrists bowing with the weight
of two apples skewered on sticks, waiting to dip.