two

you have left a space in my bed
for yourself. lying beside it, fingers
stroking linen, will never be enough.
my delight, at finding a single
golden hair, splayed out on the
pillow; like a stolen thread it
curls with lust. scouring
the bedsheets, in search of your
smell, the shampoo that even
with ten washes will not escape
my senses. lying still, in silence
with one another, drawing your
outline with a single finger.
the way your hairs stand on
end, like hot static, cold palms.
you twitch as though you are
falling from a dream. these
leaving blues i get, this
quiet mourning; daybreak
not even ripping through the
curtains yet

one

you; the deep blue eyes of the ocean
swallowing me with your suction
slow seduction, beyond corruption
my fingertips touching the hairs
below your navel, i'm getting so lost
in this secret dark. but i am the
seabird; harbouring your thoughts,
spilling each morsel of flesh onto you,
your skin warmer than the
brightest day. swallow my lips inside
yours and slide ontop of me and
look up; we are seven years old again.
you are my loss of words. you are
my inability to fall back in love
with russian strangers, out of date
haircuts, blank spaces for hearts.
you; the eyes, aquamarine pools
bury your face into my chest and
whisper; i am not deserving of this

untitled ,

You did not read what I wrote because you were too young, too fragile. You did not read what I wrote because you were too old, too stale. You did not read what I wrote because you were too afraid. And were you too scared to let Jacquelyn read it, thinking that just because she is yet to reach her eleventh birthday, she would be afraid of that part in the second stanza where he extracts a knife from his coat pocket? Children fear
n o t h i n g

Would you not let Michael read it, thinking he would avert his eyes from the naked girl with the black pony?

And Lucy, would she bend her eyes away from the page when she
read the words; he hung with
blood dripping, the
silence swallowing the
night, the night swallowing the moans, and
be so in terror, that she ran home to mother and was so scared on seeing the midnight rider that she fell and broke her body;
who will find her in the morning ?

You did not show what I wrote to the guests at dinner because of that line in the third stanza where the young girl is crouching in the darkness, - her heart removing itself from her chest with fear - and he approaches from behind and begins to peel skin off her back like a new potato; she screams like a strangled baby. You did not show what I wrote when your parents came down from the North last Christmas because you did not want them to see what I had become in their absence

because I had become something new, something more

just another one about my sister

ten years is an awful' long time for
you to have been gone for, and
now i am older than you were
when you were still alive

but i am not yet clever
responsible
or good at art

the lane outside mother's, with
a football tucked all neat into the
crook of your arm, trying to
strangle me over a school dinner
because i told all of your friends
you played with barbies, getting
lost in a maze of corridors at
grandma's house, never getting to
sail downstream

but i will never be clever
responsible
or good at art
like you were

one, two, three, four, five, six,
seven, eight, nine, ten years
and five or six days is an awful'
long time to not see your face
for, and to know that i never got
the chance to say good bye and
never will

foam beards in the bath, watching
Bambi in the children's ward,
stealing all your Tracy Beaker books,
trying to draw landscapes and
mansions and guinea pigs as well as
you

but i am not clever
responsible
or good at art

i am good at walking for miles and
miles without stopping, good at
making lasagne and doing headstands
and trying to make our parents proud

i remember buying you a white
t shirt with a photograph of an
island with a palm tree on; i
hope that you are there
now

Mondays

okay, so,
here goes;

you're all mine

i'm all yours

you ask

i stutter

'it's been so long'

i say

'i've forgotten what to do'

but you're holding me

and i'm closing my eyes

in your arms

hot skin on

hot skin

and at this point in time

time does not matter

nothing matters

nothing at all

because

i am in love

with

every

inch

of

you