We lasted 10 months
to the dot.
it seemed almost comical
how a relationship
could be so self contained.
i wondered-
looking at the freckle on the flat of your hand
whisky coloured on the smooth brown expanse—
if giving too much was really a problem I’d have to solve by myself.
the redlines we’d both crossed
reappeared in your eyes
i couldn’t understand where the stress the pressure summoned itself
begging to blow you up
but I could understand your hopelessness when you said you don’t want me to disappear.

it was only after that early morning walk to Starbucks together where
for fear of
wasting a weekend of sun
mourning
us
i debased myself
holding your hand, putting you piggyback  and running
like if i could make it to the finish line you’d give me a consolation prize and take me back.

watching videos in your halfway home
feeling your heartbeat
slow in my arms
believing it meant
this coldness was going to
melt away and
we’d rematch and be free

Until you spoke so casually
about the life you’d now get to live
unbound & free
the tautness of my heart
snapped me back to reality
cursing until my tears choked me.

i remember
packing myself away
you standing over me asking

“How are you feeling?”

like a taunt
with my fingers
grasping through the clothes
I brought to spend
in the sun
pushed to the back of
the suitcase
I stood and
unleashed all the truths
and half truths
and lies
unspooled
months
of love
in moments
to try to leave you
scarred and raw;

“you never loved me you never meant it really you want to be free you aren’t sick you don’t want to be my friend you don’t know what you want you were lying to me and now you wont even fight for me”

but you stood glacial -
and I realised it  -
was hopeless you had already moved on -
and all ive done was -
sentence myself to exile -

remembering
the day after
a date in the grasslands
where our necks
ached on earthy blankets
and legs mottled by sweet kisses
delivered from flies.

my god the
jealousy
that they had known intimacy
of the softness in the calves i took to
sleep that afternoon we met
filled the short
but beautiful
sunset
with melancholy.

maybe here you found
i held codependency quite closely.

so
you took me to one of those superstores
that sell
beds.

                                   "i have a friend who's closing he always makes and double folds the quilt because it makes him feel like someone's mum."

you half shouted over
the motorway behind us- the demanding
yet
secondary conversation.

how
i wondered, did i end up here
                   - the boy i liked 6 months in -
laughing between
his downy hair and tap touchy fingers
now
so proudly leading the way
as his
friend, tired & mischievous
ushered us into the theatre
of infinite fractal bedspreads.

                                                 "hurry up so i can close to give you your privacy i'm going for a smoke."

spoken like any true
east London mum-
all ciggie ash
and true love.

i got to watch you work

which was flattering to say the least.
to stand beside
kings and queens
doubles and singles
being bent
dragged and persuaded
to your whimsy.
watching the curve of a bicep
seized up in delirious rearranging
                         - the muscles of the neck betray the youth of love-
until a masterpiece emerging
before us both
was realised.

                      "at least now we can cuddle without the bugs...or at the least these are bed ones?"

i remember
unwrapping the currently occupied smokers
carefully settled blankets like a first birthday
gift.
sliding under them,
with my shoes kicked away in eagerness.
your arms
not yet scarred with indecision
pull me closer till i forget to breathe....

this is it.
the mattresses connected sheets and sheets and sheets of feeling and this is it at once to cover and unravel against the texture of the cushions the springs the feathers locked away this is it like the words i whispered through the skin of the pillow your arm not so much pinned as smothered below the crook of my neck and this is it all there is is the smell of us in this beautiful moment that latches me to the frame in my mind against my back with the weight of the future this is it the pressing pressing pressing at the touch of our palms the touch of our lips the distances we'll learn to walk alone or together or side by side but not able to look at the path we tread perpendicular to our hearts this is it this is it this is it it it

....then i breathe.

i think the worst thing
is never knowing how
many photos of us
you had on your phone;
while im sitting here
ruminating how
after
        657
             moments
i ended up alone.

heard the mountaintop
be scraped clear of snow this morning.
some angry man
shouting up the cliffsides
he said:
"take it all and quickly.
before my hands find the strength to close.
take me into the calm
this thin air carries my tears too easily."
he said:
"you were right about my legs
standing for the sake of looking down at you
scared of laying things bare"
he cried
"i was wrong about you
that the words meant something more
and that things get better in the end"-------------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­-------------------------------------

"that things get better in the end"

smothered in something icywarm