Mostly Drag

After the slow adult birth from a plastic bag,

the video installations – including your own –

an awkward dance, the leather and gin sofas,

the elderly man who was simply naked,

we watched the main show. Mostly drag.

I thought about when I arrived in the city,

bolting rigs and platforms like this for others to walk on.

Certain we're all raised to be one or the other.

Then an interval I didn’t realise would be so long.

I stood looking at the empty stage, while groups

of friends coagulated around me until

we were no longer an audience

but a barely-dressed crowd, chatting, holding drinks,

and this sad, shirted individual waiting and staring at nothing.

“Are you okay?”

I thought it was your sister

but you’d both left the hall to explore, I assumed,

the other exhibitions, each one layered

with concepts that I would need explained.

“Yes,” I said, reflexively, feeling reality undress me.

Saved from not-okay by the woman who finally

took to the catwalk and dumped flour, then water and then herself,

then her screams, onto the boards.

Leaving an event like this early feels like declaring

I’d rather be watching an ITV drama. That I grew up

memorising adverts, sitting beneath The Hay Wain

print that came with the house.

Still, I shame-crept away and

found you on the steps outside, bored,

held together by fishnets, an overcoat and a migraine.

The taxi arrived, an understanding

that there are so many things I will never understand.

That you were the only reason I came.