Claire Dyer
Reading, Berkshire, UK

Literary biography: Claire Dyer's collections are published by Two Rivers Press, and she has another forthcoming with them in February 2021. Her novels are published by The Domes Press and Quercus. She curates Reading's Poets' Cafe, teaches creative writing, and runs Fresh Eyes, an editorial and critiquing service. Her email is: www.clairedyer.com

Date poem was completed: 18th May 2020

The Refusal

We finished the day

sitting in the new love seat

at the end of the garden

with the remnants of the wine

we’d had with dinner.

You asked if I remembered

it was in this spot we’d

decided to buy the house

decades before. Yes, I said, I do

and, alone for weeks, that evening

we seemed peopled again

by our children and

the lives we used to lead,

and the dusk was lavender,

was sparrow

flit-and-dart, robin shouting

from the laurel, cat

rolling in dry earth as

the solar lights came on.

But none of this will be

this poem because it is

refusing to be anything

other than all the things

we couldn’t say.

It was dark

when we went inside.