II

I wake.

The air weighs heavy here.
I trace longing on your temples.
Could we be fortunate?

Light is dripping down the windowsill.
Your skin is bruised with shadows.

You are draped in a coat of grief.

You go where I cannot follow.
You are the wanderer.
And I am shaking from the loss.

Where have you gone when you are so close?

We belong to the gutters.
Children born of black blood,
Thickly coursing, weighing us down.
The will cut you,
Slice into your shoulder blades.

You will grow and dust the rooftops.

I will wake alone.
And ponder your small breath.

Old Notebook Pieces

I

She dreamt of colours.
Waking up in foreign sheets.
Gazing up at a canopy of stars.

She shows you how to move
In between the spaces.
The trees all bend their branches in.
Her lips have become
Too familiar.

You worry about the canopy falling;
Crushing you in.
You'll collide with the night sky.
Staying up all day,
Just to smudge the coordinates.

Under the pressure,
Her complexion is cracking.
And you worry.
You don't remember how to touch her
The way she taught you.
You can't find the spaces.

She is burning.
And the leaves have caught.
You wake up to repetition.
And find that she is gone.

Envious breath rolling down your tongue,
Slick, slippery, wet flesh.
Where will you go
Where birds will not shred
Your precious, taut, living skin?

They will see the worms
That live in your bowels.
That slither and twist blindly
Around your eye sockets.

They are flailing through muscle.
They are sliding down bone.

The pretty leaves have fallen
At your feet.
And beady eyes are hungry eyes
That perch near.

Where will you go
Where you will not, my love,
Be eaten alive?