“But…” Matthew Lyons

I am six and sitting in the warm penumbra of a white-doored boiler, my legs curled beneath me

on the plain beech chair. Porridge is toiling on the hob. My brother is sneezing, allergic to the marmalade he’s eating.

Tea from the pot is oak, sugared to a sheen. My father has broken for work already.

Where my sisters are I don't know –Here and gone in a blur of perfume and soap

or beside me perhaps, troubling the cereal bowls with their spoons. I haven't thought of this table

in thirty years, its blue formica—Joni Mitchell blue—hatched everywhere with white.

My mother is nowhere to be seen, although she is at the heart of it, pulling the room around her

as if we were her moons. What else can I see?

The future, like steam on the window, where is written its unspoken "But…"

The back door's beside me, its bolt undone. Beyond it will be bottles of milk from a defunct dairy—

three, now two, now one—then a gate swinging open And a gate swinging shut.