Order Of My Senses: My Senses Day (From “A World Where” chapbook)

1. Dave:

You never know the pattern
until it’s almost done.
Earliest sense is ridges
on my Dad’s finger.
I can’t hear, see, smell or taste him.

My second sense day when fifteen
I can see, and sometimes touch
what I see. Blessed I do not need
people to guide me round furniture.

Never knew what blue looked like.
My mam’s eyes are blue. I can’t hear
her or anything yet. Perhaps next time.
My dad died last year. I still remember ridges.

At thirty smell adds to my other two senses.
My mam’s air is peach blossom. 
Blue smells of steel and warmth. I can’t taste my food yet, or hear mam’s voice.

At forty five, my wife who is twenty
can touch and taste but can’t
see, hear or smell me. I tell her
she smells of roses whilst she smooths

their silken surface. I hear her say I taste
like marzipan and dark chocolate.
My mam dies of cancer before
she acquires her final sense of touch.

At sixty I taste this chicken
on a wishbone I crack with my wife,
inhale garlic white wine sauce
and watch her wince at the bone snap.

2. Sue:
 
 Some say it’s like Christmas
 every fifteen years. 
 The gift of a new sense. 
 Sense day. It’s what you make
 of it. 
 
 My Dad says I always stir
 whatever food I have until
 it looks like baby food, or
 Old folk’s home mush.
 
 I couldn’t see it or touch it.
 So. I like Tapioca. Comfort food.
 At fifteen I got off on the perfume.
 Life is a chicken roast dinner,
 
 Yorkshire pudding, mash, peas,
 and carrots you take your knife to
 and swirl until it all blends. At thirty
 I heard my Dad’s sighs of despair.
 
 Some folk say it’s naff when
 you don’t have all your senses
 till later in life, interruptions
 to going on they’ve got used to.
 
 At forty five I can see my mush.
 My bloke says I am what I eat.
 Hope he’s still with me when I’m
 sixty and can know him by touch.