Bob and His Coat of Many Colours

 

Bob and His Coat of Many Colours 

1986

Embarrassed cheeks burn red.

I have never seen a limb removed,

a prosthetic body part.

I don’t know where to look

without hurt, without overwhelm.

My masking comes undone.

1987

A chewed jumper sleeve,

red and black uniform,

three miles home to no one

until Bob.

Boxer shorts, floppy hair,

gap-toothed grin,

plastic arm never sitting straight.

Stew simmering, dumplings rising,

the smell filling the house.

Embarrassed cheeks burn red,

he rubs my head with his stub,

laughs, tells me to lighten up.

Bob the street fighter,

Bob the Hells Angel,

Bob the prisoner,

Bob the friend in our shed.

Always cooking, always singing,

always stitched into that coat of many colours —

beer brand towelling mats,

hand sewn together like Dolly’s song,

joy recycled,

a nod to time already spent in HMS.

1997

Letters salted with hunger,

peppered with longing.

He joked: eat the pages.

I wrote of food,

he carved a chessboard table.

Life got in the way.

What happened to Robert Reece?

RIP.

But my teenage memory remains:

the winter warm smell of stew,

and him rolling his dumplings.

2025

I am fifty two,

Book Club night,

talking prisons, crime, letters, visits.

His memory rolls out of me,

unexpected, uninvited —

lost in time,

and trauma.