Before / After

For the one I never knew, just how much I would miss you

 

Yet a new journey from one house to

another;

from scenes of a childhood to the scene of a murder,
the butcher,
of days when I could still dream.

I step onto the train, sit down on the floor,
with my back to the wall facing the toilet stall

door:

in this country we leave each other to search for
spaces that aren’t there.

Those pale blue eyes will never read the notes I was writing
in the margins of the novel I planned to give you
as a spontaneous gift / excuse for acting like a prick.

Thoughts & memories began their attack & so
I abandoned the project, left it to
the future
we knew would still be waiting.

 

Now, reading those scrawled excuses,
wishing
each letter was a bullet or sword,
piercing the presence of your absence,

I can only see those

last written words pinned to the wall

of the room in which,
for a while we performed the trick


of living.

 

Sorry

“When you know my name / and all of my hideous mistakes.” *

Some apologies have an elegance.

This is not one of them.

There is no begging for forgiveness ,

Only that you – as witness to my prayers of apology- can somehow forgive me.

Again.

*Julien Baker – Rejoice

Every Us

For the one I hardly knew. For you, B

The weight against

my left arm;

the calm;

deliquesce into dreams,

& all other words that can never reach

across the distance between us:

 

return,

return to me,

don’t

leave, don’t

leave 

only empties,

& drained memories

of masochistic anarchy,

& romantic naivety;

 

the weight no longer against my left arm:

 

how can I dream of anything without

your human heat beside me,

the scent and sense of you that lingered

for days; the way

each morning I would be made to

force myself to leave

from beneath

the bed sheets & between

transcendent moments of butterfly wing

flickering eyelids unfurling

into the purity of attention

beyond

the iris reflection?

 

You saw me & didn’t look away:

I thought I saw you until the day you

finally found tranquillity, that day

I remember so vividly, the day

I realised I was blind:

 

only saw what I wanted to, never

gave the true love you were long overdue.

 

With your name tattooed into my skin; with

these still-born memories knowing I will never hold you

again

 

I continue

for every me & every you, for

that short time when nothing else existed

but us.