Repair Bill
I’m dreaming of summer
when the boiler breaks.
Water escapes
its rusting prison and clings
to the ceiling, crying a face like Jesus
in drag onto the wallpaper.
We think about reporting
it to the local newspaper
or church newsletter
but decide at last
to let him dance alone.
He can be the conversation starter
at tomorrow’s therapy session
where secrets
will be uncovered softly
like blisters on a tongue.
We loved each other once
in the backseat of a car,
in a bed, in the sky,
but even those memories
flood out of us now
onto freshly scorched lands
where bushes slowly burn.
Alan Kissane works as a teacher of English in the Midlands, UK. His poetry has appeared in print and online at Allegro, Culture Matters, Dreich, Dust Poetry, Emerge Literary Journal, Epoch, Fahmidan, iamb, Ink Sac, Kindling, Mono, and Neologism amongst others. He is currently editing his first collection entitled ‘Searching For The Fire In The Long Grass.’