365 days of missing you -
in tiny pinpricks and deep gasps, 
ways big and small, hard and soft, fast forward and slow motion.

The passing prickle of your bark-laugh, 
or something like it, from across a room. 
The press of your presence, the invisible weight of your hand in mine, 
things you would have said - so loud in my ear, I jump. 

Wisps of space you should have taken, or thunderous chasms –
all the gaps you would have filled
(probably with ugly lumps of plastic and bracing flair)
now black holes, leaching out the technicolour you loved. 

And sometimes life is stilted, like those first films, 
jerky and grainy, white scratches and black grit -
silent below the white-noise whirr of the projector.

I wonder what you would say about their fate, 
these machines that were your life’s work, as we try to rehome them?
But I can hear it. Your half-joke pine-whine, mock offence –
arms crossed and eyebrows raised. 

The first film we watched, I was sick. 
The blue carpet scratched my knees and I worried about my jungle nightie.
And then I was scooped on your lap, 
clean and warm and thrilled to be up late, 
your moustache tickling my head, rough fingers stroking my palm -
tobacco and oil and rusted tin -
the roar of battle in my ears as the prince fought the dragon,
the dark in my lungs. 

When the sword turns black, I am afraid – 
but I am also safe.
Because before I knew sentences, or myself, I knew you were there – 
and I knew it every day after

but these last ones.

I am afraid again. 

Will there be 365 ways to miss you, next year? 
Will they hurt when I need them to? 
Will the sound fade and pictures blur to grey 
as life grinds on scene by scene and drags me with it -
celluloid frames improperly stored?

The thorns recede and the princess wakes up, 
inexorably over and over, colour flooding her cheeks -
a thousand times or more through the years, despite your protests.

At the end, the tape flaps wildly, spinning free
like me, now,
Reeling. 

Again, Daddy. 
I want to see it again.