My life has ended and I’m living in encore,

each muscle shrivelled, each gland sucked of the salty

sweat of life. Lopsided lipstick smile,

the fading evidence of performance.
Clapping clapping clapping clapping clapping

clapping I’m bowing bowing bowing bent

over arms brushing the sticky stage floor.
                                                        Last season I lived army crawl as my only mode

                                                        of mobility. Not with military efficiency. Like I’d been

                                                        stabbed over and over and I needed to get to my phone

                                                        but I didn’t know what room it was in, didn’t know

                                                        if I’d left it on the bus last night. Survival

                                                        was exhausting so I labelled it a tomorrow problem,

                                                        and fell asleep, face down in my smeared blood.
                              This season I’m on a merry-go-round and instead of a pony

                              my ride is a big slab of newly drying concrete I have to walk

                              through. Tap the red runny nose of the clown face

                              on the other side. Turn around, walk back, fast

                              as I can. Turn back towards the grin in the mirror. The merry

                              -go-round is on its side, close to the wings.
                                                                                                          There’s an identical one

                              in my brain, gaining speed before it thwacks against the top

                              of my spinal cord every time it goes around. Nightly performances

                              for months and I stay in character, sleep in the cockles of the concrete

                              bed kept-ever gluggy by leaks in the roof and industrial humidifiers.
I want the audience to go home so I can too

but they want autographs, drinks, dancing. They want me

to come home and fix their roofs, their relationships,

their climate anxiety, their dinner –

something leafy and colourful

and not from a packet.
                              They need massages and hope and streaks and streaks

of my laughter enthusiastically smacking

their bright plump

days and warm, sticky nights.
I am turning to heavy dusty curtains, to the historic

kitty litter preserved backstage, to disintegrating

front row tickets in a scrapbook of regret, to a jumble

of licked wounds still thriving on occasional sentimental

thoughts in a garbage bag that refuses to suffocate me
          because it too was in the audience of my life

          and wants me to carry on, to strut and strut, and fret.
I lift my head up from my deep bow and I see

the next season, promises of script all dark wit, raw

dripping performances. My wonky smile

crudely drawn on, stares back

from the glossy flyer.