Stalking

My ex-girlfriend’s parents
explained the world to me.
“No, humans do not have to
co-operate, stop trying
to speak to us, you
stalker.”

I’ve always preferred
going behind,
not in front. Especially women
with high heels,
clip clop clip clop
like a ponytailed
handbag-saddled
predator. I pull into a pitstop,
“after you, my dear,
and this whiskered clown in the cowboy hat
and the sack of acne
on the skateboard, after you.”
The footsteps, the muttering,
sweep swarms of itchy wasps
round my skull.

So,
when that curveless Albanian girl
I’d met in a bubble of cyberspace
came skidding away
from her knot-entangling mother,
her fist-wielding father,
her penis-brandishing brother,
and then there they were,
in my email inbox,
outside my launderette,
in my front garden screaming
“Where is she? Where is she? Please,
speak to us!”,
a clod of compassion
got wedged in my throat
after I’d put down the phone
to the police.