Flashback/hop forward

This day, 21 years’ ago: Hillsborough;
The Sun blaming the fans for crushing
each other because, you know,
we humans are bastards like that.
We’re nearly mid-way and the scripts unchanged.
All day, the heartbeat’s at fault. It’s
ebbing like a draining sea; it’s flash-
floods in neurological byways. If
I touch your heartbeat through wrist-
vein, press, like this, it leaps to meet
mine as pulse in fingertips. I look
around. Everything’s taking its own
pulse: cherry-blossom, lap-top, lamppost,
street-sign. Tutor at Goldsmiths.
The under-confident do less well. You don’t
say. Social ease of blag-forests, blag fairies.
We might as well go out and chalk hearts
like hopscotch on pavements between here
and Harborough instead of me
watching you, watching lives happening on Facebook.