“I’ll worry about you and you’ll worry about me”
Here we never think about ourselves
I don’t even do my hair in the morning
Neither does she.
I go to school and she goes to work and we look like
Hastily painted rag dolls
Like the ones we
Send to Africa each year for the kids
Who have nothing.

The only person I know
Who will mix chocolate milkshake
With Jack Daniels
Say
“Hey, it’s like baileys!”
And drink it with her daughter.

We visit revolution, a shop
And buy the most obscure ornaments
Paying for a hookah in cash
Is not what everyone does
And taking your offspring to get her ears pierced
(again)
At a place called the “Screaming Needles”
Where a heavily tattooed bloke laughs at me for being scared
And holds the gun to my ear
This one,
Then the other
And then it’s done. It throbs dully
But you push my head and laugh at my dreadlocks
And I can’t help but laugh either.
Although I know
We’re not even laughing at me
Just at the fact neither of us care
About how hopeless life is.

Sometimes I lie in bed and hear you say
“The only question is who goes next.
If it isn’t you who kicks the bucket we’ll cope.”