I think of you,
grasping a candle and hunting for matches.
I try to get close, breathe you in,
But you fade like an apparition
And dissolve like laughter into the forest.

We have spent one year
Two months and
Twenty days getting to know each other,
Sleeping patterns merged with alarms to shatter them, learning codes as we text, text, unspoken passion
And kissing until our lips are sore.
Your muddled fury,

Buried, barely visible beneath that stiff upper lip
Is spilling like lava.

A single tear in the tapestry of time, you are content with the promise of dirt, drums, fabric woven from
Elephant tears, ill health and forty degree-heat.

Your tickets are my death note,
Your passport my noose,
Choking the gutters like ivy.

At dawn I creep to bed with a vast sea in my ear,
Tracing your veins like a crumpled map, warm hands
Marking out far-flung cities.
I watch the sun rise, and you sleep hard, jolting as if
Someone were pressing their palm to your throat.

Now. We are through. Empty as spring.

I imagine us like a blessing of thunder that scatters the clouds.
Unforgotten are temples, a baptism in foreign blood,
Low hanging skies that weep onto Brighton Pier.

Without sorrow, without prayer
I will keep pieces of you in mothballs,
The constant dusk of a forgotten drawer, dreaming you
Like a ghost that forever lingers in these hallowed halls.