I can see now how it’s
been like searching
for a small light
in the midst of a
sudden power cut
like the ones when
you’re a kid, and
someone else has to
explain just what is
happening around you
and, having found it,
shielding it closely,
holding it tight –
together, in the heart of it,
through the dark night
I remember when I stole
a piece of your jigsaw puzzle;
slid it across the countertop
like a miniature credit card;
half inched it like a thief
and hid it in the cat’s basket.
I watched you work for hours;
lay down bit after bit, unwavering
in your focus, unaware of my small
hostage, as you spread out across
our dining room table, smiling
at each of your fresh conquests.
More days passed as the picture
became clearer, and I remember
thinking: at some point, this will
all have to end. Then one day
I looked up to see you shovelling it
back into the box, as if you had
known it would come to nothing:
and just like that, it was forever undone;
it wouldn’t be finished, and neither had won.
There’s something
about a sky like this.
Your mother’s clean cloth
laid out like a map –
it’s lace landmarks, hazy.
A ghostly flag, hung half mast,
to the four corners of
your eyes, pinned with pearl.
We walk into it, and it’s as if
our heels lift upwards –
blown far, like paper or steam
and I feel buoyant beside you, as
we walk lighter, lean in together
towards a sky like this.
sea has shaped it
opened it wide –
the ear of Venus
pressed together
like French chalk
on the sea bed
they tell us not
to take them home
but I hide it
immaculately
salt has smoothed it
painted it blush –
ever so slightly
pinker inside and
almost heavy
like a final word
when we find ourselves
together, I glow
like the moon
sometimes, it seems
so perfect – a soft light
like the moon
our shapes wax
and do not wane
like the moon
but then I reach out
and can touch only air.
I wonder about the eclipse
of you and I, and turn pale
like the moon
I was seven when
the neighbour’s cat caught a pigeon
and dragged its twittering, tattered trunk
through our kitchen.
The cat and her mouth,
now clean and empty, seemed innocent,
but the errant trail of crumpled feathers
gave it up.
We hid it from mam,
stayed up in shifts, fostered and fed it sugar
water from a spoon, playing each other’s
game of nurse.
I remember the thrill
waiting for the magical renewal we were
led to expect: a resurgence promised that
would never come.
It fell still then,
its beak soaked, sticky with sugar, as its
drowned and silent body lay between us,
ruined and scrap.
Sometimes I wake from
shadowed dreams to see the smothered thing
in its throes, and I do not sleep. We were not
what you think.
I don’t feel bad about how
the world might be ending –
and I don’t feel guilty,
if that’s what you’re getting at.
I’m more concerned about how
I can feel myself bending –
a little like this, at first
and also, somehow, like that.
When it gets late, we watch Cops on TV,
once all the rest have made their way to bed.
Then you make cheese on toast, and I make tea –
we feel inclined to sit up late, instead –
and though our conversation is quite plain,
you’ll show me something funny on your phone,
and when we laugh our ribs vibrate with pain,
as though at something we should have outgrown.
At three or four o’clock we start to shrink;
my tired mind begins to wonder whether
you’ll think about us sitting here, in sync,
when you and I no longer live together.
For me, it’s that I’ll miss, though it seems trite –
when we watch Cops together late at night.
You write about the moon
its opalescence
a bowl of shadow and pearls
the way it paints over
everything it sees
the world in pallid gloss
You write about art
its multitudes
the lawlessness of expression
the ghost that shapes
everything we do
the bent arm behind us
You write about love
its essence
and of the helplessness
the violent shooting heart
without restraint
the thunder after the strike
You write
You write
You write
and it makes me sick
It was you that taught me
to put newspaper between
the bottles so they don’t clink
when you put the bins out,
and how to read a map;
you’re handy like that –
a born navigator
I still get lost.
There’s a rolling boil deep
in my chest these days,
rumbling in my tight throat;
I let it out in slow sighs,
like bleeding a radiator,
and pick plaster off the walls
you built in the house
I still get lost.
Listen to the soft fricatives
of the leaves outside;
I think it’s autumn now, and
I still see you in the bath water,
and smell you in the sea –
I want to hear it over and over.
I wish you’d tell me
so I don’t get lost.
ataraxicat 