For some reason
I am thinking about what I want them to say about me
when I’m dead.
I think:
“She was not afraid to take a risk.”

Remember saying yes to me.
Remember how you leapt
onto my diesel-spilled boat as I turned the ignition?
Remember your solos
remember your price hikes
remember your football club
remember your questionable choices
remember our pact to work so hard
remember persuading me to try clowning
remember Billie
remember the first time
you swooshed male contours across your gorgeous face.

Remember sitting in that shit caravan at the comedy fest holding the freshly-printed particulars
of our future ghost house
the the would-be site of our coming undone
one cider in across the shonky table
are we really doing this??
You, emotional and unsure but saying yes
me, confident without empathy, determined
to have a house despite the glimmer
of self-betrayal, yours
and mine
…then heading out to cry/laugh our heads off.

Remember your no.
Remember your not now, to me, to anyone, to the voice that makes you shrink.
Remember saying yes to your own self, divine
impossible to be wrong.
Remember how it feels to offer a gut-known boundary
and have it met. Remember
how it feels when it doesn’t go that way
and you are ego-bruised
and angry
and see that I am
barbed and snippy
and still here
child, teen, and thank fuck, the adult too
holding a blazing heart.

Remember saying yes to me again.
It is the risk-taker in you
that I fell in love with
and it is the one
who took this huge and terrible risk in the name of freedom
that I recognise
that I see, imperfectly,
that I love all the more.