Hollow pink,
Beer embossed,

Eyes  -
Icing roses,

And the sound,
That sound…

Dionysian.

He had a tearjerking smile
A temper,
A medal,
An offering of soap
And a knack for loyalty.
In letters
He called me
Old Sport.

And she
Was a film star
Who could paint.

The poster girl of well-thumbed submission,
The American Nurses Association,
A narrow mouthed river in Oregon,
Charles Howard Hinton’s fourth dimension,
A track from Pixies Bossanova,
Antibodies,
Anorexia Nervosa.

Fire,
Turns witches into meat
And spends nights with marshmallows.

Earth,
Riddled with growth.

Air and Water win.
Stick prizes on these shiftless things,
The see-through drowners that score absolute zero.

It Girl,
Pierced **** girl,
****** as a jaywalking crow
With bluebottles for eyes.
I can see your billion goosebumps,
Your skin dragging at
Your perfume.
You’re not beautiful,
But girl -
You
Are
It.

I’ve tickled it into his naked back,
When he’s ******* me it spools around my tongue,
I devote myself with every playful smack –
And harder still when certain smacks have stung.

I never thought I’d fall for such a man,
Who smuggles love like drugs inside a coat,
I love loudly just because I can,
The words collect like songbirds in my throat -

Or three boats arranged into a fleet,
To sit behind a hesitating sky,
Sulking with the shyess of retreat,
Billowing with every loaded sigh.

This pain is an animal
That I have not tamed.

Its teeth will fall out
And sooner or later
I am bound to feel sorry for it.

‘You missed the fog’
He said,
‘Big Ben’s getting high’.

I miss you, I said.

Two goats
Push their heads
Through the gate –
Daintiness
Huffs in the mist.

Chickens march
Pausing to mourn over lumps.

Why don’t they straighten out
Those stones? I said.
I’ll do it myself.
One day I’ll come here
And I’ll do it my ******* self.

The goats race away,
Tripping into each other's backs -
Chasing a happiness
That comes for them every day.

There’s a spider on your cheek
To the right of a wrinkle.
Has it become a feature of your
Face -
Do people stare and sketch it?

What long days you keep.

I will turn my eyes on you tonight,
Because there is no romance to the burning dog
Dragged like a myth to the tune of a truck -
And no roses or violets
Will sweeten that path.

Get me my old school photograph
And I’ll point out every boy that
I ever kissed
Or even just dreamed of kissing.
Him?  Linguistic brilliance,
Chewed the skin either side
Of his fingernails, red
Raw they were.
And him? A map of acne
On his back, felt like
Braille,
And him? Such
Almond eyes,
Like milk allergies.
I take photos of every beautiful thing
I’ve ever seen.

The devil is in the details,
And God is in them too.

History repeats on us,
One life holding the gown
Of the next,
Waiting for its turn;
Just look at how the future greets us,
With a capful of
Utter unconcern.

I want to be of use to you,

But my memories
Are not admired by most –
They involve love and only love,
Or desire described as love
And floating
In the sky of a castle
with a hatful of flowers boasting ‘now’.

I’ve tickled it into his naked back,
When he’s ******* me it spools around my tongue,
I devote myself with every playful smack –
And harder still when certain smacks have stung.

They were married in a seaside town that Morrissey forgot to bomb. The groom, spot lit white, held his bride by the waist. Dee, the groom’s younger brother, grasped an empty wine glass warily by the stem, like a dangerous flower.
The band began to play ‘Blue Velvet.’
“Oh.” Dee said, with sudden fairies in his eyes. “I like this song.”
“You do?” I asked.
“Mmm, yes.” He replied, and the fairies were gone. The bride and groom swayed on the dancefloor. “Get me another drink, will you?” He asked, holding out his glass.  “And be quick about it before I change my mind.”

I was in Room 12.  
The key-card blurred in my hand. Dee was falling over, laughing.
It was the first time I’d ever seen him drunk. As a rule, drinking was just another enemy - and in the same way that he pretended to drag from a cigarette, he would pretend to swig from a ***** bottle. He’d leave parties untouched, passing the alphabet test with colours. His lips would be wet, but he would never get ******.
I always wanted to get him drunk. For selfish reasons, mostly. He didn’t know how to lose control. His discipline made a mockery of me.
When I was young I thought that willingly ‘misplacing’ yourself was the pinnacle of artistic freedom - that you could not be found until you had been lost. It’s a funny thing – I envied him his self-control and yet I undermined it constantly, because sometimes when the moon was right and the computer monitor shone like a nightlight, he would open his mouth and let me push my tongue in without a fight. I wanted this from him, always. It was such a feeling of conquest; like my germs had won. I didn’t want to be another cigarette, another bottle, I wanted him to put his lips on me and give in, get a lungful, get a mouthful, get a hit. I wanted to scupper all his plans.

He flopped onto the bed of Room 12. He was too drunk to get undressed. I began shrugging off my clothes, rooting through my travel bag for toothpaste.
“Art?”
“Yeah?”
“What are you doing?”
“Toothpaste. I can’t find my toothpaste.”
I looked over at him. He was smiling, very ****** and as blonde as hell.
"Aren’t you going to come over here and take advantage of me?” He asked, still smiling. He’d unpinned the flowers from his lapel and tucked them behind his ear. I let go of my bag and abandoned the toothpaste hunt.
‘Do you…want me to take advantage of you?”
He laughed without laughing, something that he was talented at.
“I don't know. Do you want to take advantage of me?”
Of course I did, that was a stupid question and he knew it. When I first met him, I wrote in my journal that I had met a very serious angel. Angels can only fly because they take themselves lightly, and so very serious angels are stuck to the earth. That’s how I saw him, stuck to the earth and meant to be flying. I romanticized him of course, like I romanticize everything. And now on the bed, with his hands in his lap like doves sleeping off a magic trick, how could I say no?
“I don’t want to do anything you don’t want to do. You’re incredibly ******.”
And I remember the way he smiled and closed his eyes and opened his arms, drunkenly embracing the air where I was meant to be, with the sheets creasing beneath him and his suit creasing too. The flowers behind his ear stayed put like they’d been painted in. I ambled over, half drunk, and I lowered myself onto his body. I kissed him. His mouth opened wide, he pulled me closer. My hands dislodged the flowers. My germs won just like the wine had won. I pinned an angel to the earth, and he was never meant to fly anyway, because for someone so light - he was far too heavy.

My boot on the stone,
Lace is stubborn black.

Greatcoat collar whips grey -
Joins sky.

A flat day for colours,
Boot on stone,
Stone is dim,
Dim like sky,
Sky grey.

Stubborn black won’t knot -
But why, it won’t say.

An old life
In a black box,
My only message when
The plane goes down.

Leave it untouched and embedded,
Don't find it,
Don’t peel the paint,
Don’t listen.

Don’t open coffins.

I laughed today,
I looked like Super Hans
When he tried to come off crack.

I suppose it's fine to be sloppy.

But if I ever wear a tracksuit –
Shoot me.

Our teeth clashed –
A clunking omen?
Tipsy fingers strolling.

“I think you might be a genius.”
“Shh.”
Onto backs, rolling.

Something asked,
Can’t disobey it.
Dreaming mouth delays it.

“I love you.”
“Shh.”
No, I’ll say it, I’ll say it.

Mutual ******* in Madrid,
Athens in the winter tans me red,
Paris lamps, romantic power grid,
Venice swishes, watching me give head.

Caribbean wave locks me to the sand,
Fresh water fish Frenchly kiss my hair,
Land’s End extends a silver hand,
And all the angels know that I am there.

Black curls,
Broken commas
Unarranged.

Snowlit cheeks,
Cold flowers
Dimly veined.

Dog eyes,
Rich dark
Recycled glass.

Bottom lip,
Baby fat.
Upper? Sparce.

A big shadow,
Overgenerous,
Sits quietly
As the lamplight sleeps
On its side.

The clock beats inside my thumb,
Ash kisses the floor,
Teeth wear fur.

Somewhere there is a TV,
And people clap.
Dare I eat more chewing gum
Just to find it in my hair?

Harriet –
I have wanted to say this
For a million years.

Your face is cruel.
Your daughter
Popped all those balloons because
She didn’t want that party -
And Eton will not
FIX YOUR SON.

This family is split down the middle –
The hard ******* and the
Fruitloops.
Get used to it, Harriet.
Your kids belong to us.

An inch -

the most
unsung
jacket
of skin

of tongue

of fur

of floorboard.

Run me over

Give me
An
Inch

And one more
And one more
And one more
And one more

Pale cradle
My skin hurts

My knees are two angels
In love with my face.

I’m a dead cherub
With a cigarette
And the shakes –

Tell me I smell like a bath-bomb,
Tell me I’m worth your time,
But never let me know
That you know
That I’m afraid.

Take a crayon to this page –
Contrary to popular belief
I love bright colours,
Especially on a Sunday when it’s wet.
(This is when everyone does colouring in,
Because water does not stick to wax.)

Take a crayon, darling,
Tickle me pink.

Of course – a blush
Of course - a rose,
Ecg plasters,
Hives,
And the blood
On the feet
Of eternal fouettes.

(Red hourglass woman
Turns everybody’s heads –

Because she's so far away from death
And because she's red, baby, red.)

Fossilized
Bed frame in the garden
Picked bare by the vulture of rain.

Analyse.

Mustachioed archeologists
Will dustily brush
Its slatted ribcage
And wonder how many years it suffered.

“This ornate four poster,
This mahogany rollercoaster,
Was used to aid in sedation and
Sensation.
To the best of our knowledge
It seems to have broken
Under the weight
Of a boy's imagination.”

Unlike the slow and groaning gloaming,
A creeping darling
Moaning morning
Heavy lashed and lulling
With a shushing fingered longing,
Puts her eyes on, limp and limpid,
And steals through fields of lamb-licked grass.

In the city, roofs are cracking
And the light is soundly whacking
At the windows of the sisters
Sharing bedrooms with their brothers
And sunlight settles on the curtains
Of a girl who is uncertain
Of the boy she’s waking up with
Who is feeling up her ****.

Politeness stops her yawning
On this creeping darling moaning morning.

The mother of Love
Is Quietness,
And
The last thing to leave
Pandora’s box
Was
Hope.

Amber storms are coming –
But not for you and I, my love.
We will sit here in peace
With the windows
And our mouths
And the boxes
All shut.

Dullness comes like rain,
Eyes dull like champagne
Left out in glasses cold,
Like underpolished gold.

Such mollycoddle words
Such words I’ve often heard,
Disguised as strong commands,
With my shoulders meeting hands.

A shooting spree of dreams
On a melancholy green,
I hide him under beds,
And tell the room he’s dead.

Dullness comes like rain,
Like old champagne again,
Paralysed and rolled,
In underpolished gold.

Snatching at the hours,
I point my feet
Like a clock at twelve
And imagine hands.

I’d like to call you,
I’d like to tell you
That I’m thinking about
Walking to the countryside.
I’d like to tell you
That this highness
Doesn’t feel royal,
And that I can’t stop
Thinking
Of beheaded ancestors
And bolt-headed cattle,
Loveable tortures,
Millions of wandering dogs.

I want to call you and
Reel off a list of
Everything that’s ever happened,
All the people in the world
Who have made love at
Deeply
Satisfying
Angles,
I want to call you,
Pump you with blood,
My fingers rabbiting
Through a snug warren -
Bright Eyes,
Bulldozer,

Wanna call you
And say
'How could he do it to me?'
And in the same breath,
'Imagine me on my knees,
Oh, uh,
**** my mouth from
A distance -
But,
But,
How could he do it?'

Wanna call you
Because I’m not happy at all,
The universe is sitting
On my head,

Need to call you,
All ******* in a tangle
Baby,
I know the histories of
All the trees
And I want to pour over maps
Today.

I want to call you,
I've got so many questions.

I’d like to call you
And ask you
Why I’m not dead.
No melodrama,
No pressure,

But I’m gonna really need an answer.

In a Bluebird toffee tin
Are a hundred letters –
Most of them doodle-stamped and
Delivered by hand.
Unlike the letters I sent to you
They do not smell of spritzed cologne,
(A trick that I learned from Grease)
They are not messy
Or tea stained,
But perfect powder blue
And allowing for small extravagances –
The Cursive of the Obsessive,
Cursed by neatness and perfect hearts.

I pick one out at random,
A casually cruel one sent from Rome –
I imagine you blinking on a balcony
With dazzles on your collarbone,
A teeny tiny sugarless coffee
At your side,
And a pen tapping your knee.

“I’m not a **** at all –“ you wrote,
It’s only that you are gregarious
In the most DISGUSTING way.
That’s your problem not mine -
Your optimism won’t catch you.
Cynicism won’t catch you either,
But it has the courtesy not to throw you.
I’m stopping now,
By the time you get this
I’ll be back home.
What pointlessness we endure for one other.
I miss you, as you say,
‘ever so’ –
Bedtime here is a source of misery.”

And then you signed your name,
Tiny,
Small,
Impossibly graceful,
Just like yourself.

You were always nasty
When you missed me.

Grey morning,
The newspaper and
The cat.

His lilac eyelids can’t wake up,
Weighed down with
Saturday’s *****,
Pints and pints.

His dark legs,
My white legs,
Mixed up like coffee and cream -
He stirs and coughs and maybe dreams.

How I love Sundays,
Quiet and warm
With the newspaper,
The cat,
And him.

Table,

My father and I sat
In our timeless silence
That brewed away beneath the lights
Like a sweat that never breaks.

Sister and the Stranger
Sat flanked by pillars,
With two full glasses of
Blood-lit wine
Simmering warmly like
Lamb's hearts
Dropped into bowls.

Never do I love my sister more
That when she wears that little fishhook
Of a smile,
A grim refusal of her lips to flicker down,
Making mincemeat of photographers,
Men in bad jumpers,
And garrulous psychopaths.
It was crueler than any frown.
Far more efficient.

The Stranger buttered her bread-roll all at once,
(A damning thing to do this afternoon)
And dinner turned to coffee
Without a hitch.
I noticed that the whole evening was
Done in a deliberately cut-glass way -
Two siblings painting themselves
Into the people they never wanted to be,
To make a ******-minded point.

She’s not one of us.
She’s nothing like us.
She’s nothing like mother -
Absolutely nothing like mother!

And as we stood waiting for the car
My sister turned to me and said –
“I thought my expectations of daddy were low.”
She swiped at her flapper-girl haircut,
“Turns out my expectations
Have a basement.”

We only notice class
When we need to shut someone
Out.
We only notice class

When it's all we've got.

We shed our gap-toothed gentleman coats
and ran white skinned into a purple river,

George (a weak swimmer) grabbed handfuls of
reeds as the water undid a fantasy of clouds.

Our feet found love with the edges of rocks and
our swimming trunks unloaded the stink of chlorine

into the cold bright dark light miracle of water,
our reflections broken into champagne pieces and

beautiful as only two laughing boys can be.
How clichéd to be lost in the heart of the morning,

as George sat with his orange juice like an
illustration drawn by the most lighthearted of artists,

a little prince against a backdrop of blooming baoabs
that shrugged behind him like green diamonds

with the tunes of birds still clinging to their leaves.
How deeply romantic I was at fourteen -

too young to have read Brideshead Revisited,
too old to have gazed at George’s hair and

seen a simple tumble of boring blond.
This was the summer that ached with everything,

like a muscle throbbing during tennis
reminding you you’re playing as best you can.

That summer was the shimmering pause
between two acts of a dismal play -

our childhood not yet left behind,
lingering like a tan line on the shoulders of joy.

One night we drank lemonade out of brandy
glasses and sat together in the biggest bath you’ve

ever seen, winding our wrists together to sip
from each others drinks, his hair was dark and

damp at the tips and there were bubbles everywhere.
Such things I remember, the gentleness of first love

and the way it shapes each love to come,
I’m still a sucker for blonds and a gallant lover of

summers spent as they should be spent:
in water baby England, with the countryside

humming inside your ears, and the sunlight
warming up the grass to greet your feet after

swimming in rivers, and to wind down at night
with a friend who is beautiful,

and to kiss them just once, near the ear and only here,
to wish them goodnight, goodnight, goodnight.

The winter was unkind
Yet you loved it
So much,
It was your gauche friend,
Reclusive in its blankness,
Complicit with its demands for
Many layers,
As snow is complicit in ****** -
Snuggling coldly into
Footprints.

And I remember the simpering
Light
That night,
As it squeaked into the
Room like
Lab rats bred for death.
I remember the slip
Of your body on the sheets
And your
Speech bubble breath
Spearmint ellipses,
Your teeth white
Your eyeballs white
Your watch-face white
The witch behind you
White,
Whispering the content
Of her
Turkish delight
And sculpting you
For her museum.

(Nothing ever really warmed you up.
How I hated that winter.)

I put the heating on and
Showed you the
Wedding dress –
An antique affair
That had been passed down.
My sister did not want it,
As she is not at all romantic.

When I got back from
The bathroom
You were out of bed,
Holding the dress against yourself,
Stuck in the mirror,
Head turned,
Absolutely lost -
A tiny bride
White as a
Snow tongued branch
And just as still,
Waiting for the wind
Or the clouds
Or some kind of joy
To move you.

My old boyfriend
used to wear a very
particular
(yet very commonplace)
aftershave.

Now and again
I'll catch a molecule
of it in the air -
in a club
or a lift
or a supermarket,
and it doesn't comfort me
at all.

No, no,
it doesn't comfort me
at all.

It’s like crossing paths with a ghost.

I found it so jarring
that it
inspired me to swap
my usual cologne
for a lesser known one,
which I mix with
another
uncommon fragrance
to create
my own
blend.

Girly?
Indeed.

But if I die
no-one will ever
be startled
by my ghost.

(Not unless
they know
which colognes
to mix.)

(I fancy you.
I ******* fancy you.
I fondant fancy you,
I flight of fancy you,
I fancy-pants you,
I fancy the pants off you)

I fancy your body -
Every inch of it!
I fancy your hair,
I fancy your spit,
I fancy the way you
Knock on my door,
Just the knock gets me hard!
(But I don’t fancy the door.)
I fancy you first thing
In the morning
When my mouth wants to do something
Other than yawning,
I fancy the way you pull at my hair,
I fancy your smiles,
I fancy your stares,
I fancy your job,
Your wardrobe,
Your phone,
I fancy your burps,
Your kisses,
Your groans,
I fancy your tongue,
I fancy your licks,
And I really
Really
fancy your ****,
But most of all
I fancy the fact
That I fancy you
And you fancy me back.

Dinner table,
Bowls of light,
Stage fright, lilies,
No appetite,
Dark absences nibbling
Right through my eyes
Like black rabbits pulled
Out of Truman Show skies,
Provoking the question
From those sat up front –
Is this a trick you’re pulling -
Is this one of your stunts?
But no amount of smiling
Will do –
Nod all you like.
They’re onto you.

Christmas Eve,
Sister’s house,
Black eye,
Ulcerated mouth.
Divinely tickled-
By Miss World!
A pinecone and mistletoe
Christmas hurled
Down en suite toilets
Porcelain pink,
My face makes love
To the bathroom sink.

The most squalid Little Lord
In the county, me,
Summer blooms hold
No charms for me,
So I try to apply my
Favourite smile
And travel a few more
Country miles
To a chemist that doesn’t
Know my face.
I browse a bit
(Condoms, spectacles case)
Then I try to
Convince the pharmacist
That I need two
Bottles of
Gee’s Linctus.

The cruelest boyfriend
I ever had
Gives head to a toilet roll
And his fingerpads
Are bordello yellow
From greased nicotine,
This ******* in Primrose
Exhales smoke in a stream,
And I try to remember what
Buttercup said,
His baby’s breath whispers
Wilt in my head,
Something about purity
Something about loss
Something about cleanliness
Something about God
Something about something
That I should tick off as regrettable,
But one flower can make everything
So *******
Forgettable.

1.

I'm on my fourth
pack of cigarettes,
my twentieth cup
of tea,
my mouth tastes like
the gusset
of an unwashed person's
negligee.

*******, phone.
*******, door.
I don't even know
what you're for
anymore.

2.

A copy of a copy of a copy...
who said that?
who ******* said it?
No! Train your brain, Arthur!
Don't you dare Google it!

3

I can already feel
the lights of the
hospital
warm on my
head.
Make me a brew, ladies,
save me a bed.

4.
Why didn't anybody tell me
that it would be so hard
so instantly?
The last time
if I recall
it took two weeks
before the curtain call.

5.
I think I need to dream
to be reminded of
pretty words.

1.  Understand Weather.

(Strangers on a bench,
Looking up.)

“Cirrus, I think.
Cirrocumulus?”
“Stratus surely.
Or altocumulus.”

(You must also hate the cold
And the sun,
And always wish the current season
Was a different one.)


2. Never Be Honest About Stuff That Hurts.

Pain so bad
Can’t even **** –
“How are you, Arthur?”
“Brilliant, thanks!”

3. Have An Opinion On These People

Katie Price (Feminist? Witch?)
Kate Moss (Goddess? *****?)
Stephen Fry (Snob? Wilde?)
Frankie Boyle (Offensive? Mild?)

4. Never Talk About Money.

“So.” An American asks. “How much do ya make?”
“I…I…Oh My God look at that dog over there that has a face like a pancake!”

5. Learn How To Apply The Class System To Cigarettes.

Pipe – Monty Withnail
Silk Cut – Comfortably Middle.
Lucky Strikes – Probably not British.
B&H; – Shops at Lidl.

6. Secretly (Or Openly) Enjoy The Royal Family

“So, did you hear what they called the baby?”
My boyfriend shrugs and says -
“I don’t give one tiny ****.”
“They named him George. Isn’t that twee?”
“Aw ******* hell, I had a tenner on Louis!”

7. Hey Jude.

If all else fails,
At the end of the night,
Sing na-na-na
And it’ll be alright.

8. Never Complain About Your Meal

“Hm. These mussels look a bit suspect.”
“How’s your meal, Sir?”
“Perfect!”

9. Always Hate The French, (Even If Your Own Mother Is French)

Numberplate 'F'
On an articulated lorry.
“Stuck up…onion…*******.”
(I’m sorry mum, I’m so sorry!)

10. ‘Jerusalem’

Mime a sword in your hand,
Bang your chest with devotion,
Wave the sword about,
Sing with emotion.

You stood up,
Your blazer ironed to immaculacy,
And in the quietest voice I’ve ever heard
Told the Society
That
You

Were

A

Nihilist.

I piped up like a prophet and said
"The only true nihilist
Is a dead one."
I just wanted to speak to you.
God,
I didn’t mean it.

My phone clamped to my ear,
Listening to you think.

We were punning.

(We would combine categories like ‘The Royal Mail’ and ‘Sea Life’,
And come up with things like Octo-post and
Cod-espondence.)

That night it was ‘Crockery’ and ‘Celebrities’.
You thought of Plate Moss
And
Camilla Parker Bowl.

I spent a whole hour chasing the ducks,
Trying to make friends with them.
You watched.
I don’t think you even cracked a smile.
As the sun went down you took my hand
And in the resigned manner of a man resigned,
said,
(For the first time,
Like you’d been shoved into it)
‘I love you.’

Perhaps envy is the mark of love -
Especially when you can devote yourself to the art of it,
To covet every grin and wish that you were half as sincere,
Half as pure,
Half as certain.

Faceful of eyes -

Handling a beer bottle
Like a loaded gun.
(You never tripped over your shoelaces,
You never danced at parties,
And you never kissed strangers.)
How I loved that about you.
How I envied it.
How I fashioned an idol out of it.
For someone so feather-light, you were  
Immovable.
How I wish I'd known
That night
That I would never see you
Never dancing
Again.

Do you remember
When you called me
‘******* of the
Century?’

I do.
I remember the exact
Shade of red I went –
I can pick it out from
Colourwheels in DIY
Stores –
(“An *******’s
Shame",
Also available in gloss.)

Look –
I know what you thought
And I know what you’re
Thinking,
But you were never an
Experiment,
Never on a par with a
Night of heavy drinking,
Thinking,
‘I’ll never touch ***** again!’

And no,
I’m not sure why
We still end up in
Each other’s arms,
But I don’t think we should
Talk about it…
What good will it do
For me and you?
Why strip ourselves
Of the only innocence
We ever had?

Reliving you is
A beauty to me
Because you are the only
Souvenir of a past
Before Him,
A breathing reminder
That there was such a thing.

So,
Do you remember
Calling me
‘******* of the
Century?’
I do.
I remember the exact shade
Of red I went,
And I paint my guilt in it.

We were just two children
Really,
Not knowing which way to
Turn the maps,
But finding our own way
Anyhow.

Our own strangeness
Propped us up
Until we were
Curling our fingers
Around a strange sky,
Two stars touching,
Neither hot enough to
Burn the other.

You learned how to cry quietly,
The same way that I learned,
Holding onto your stomach
Like a little bear that was worn out
And threadbare
From the wear and tear of a
Lonely childhood.
A tear slipped,
Like a boy on a wet slide,
Pooling at your nose.

“I keep making mistakes.”
You said.

And I told you

That I would delight in
Any mistake
you had ever made,
Or would ever make.

You could hardly even walk
But you’d only been on bottled water.

I was drunk.

“Tell me then,” I said,
“Do I make you worse?”

You called me
A whole litany of horrors
And shambled away,
And didn’t call for two days.

(I was so vain back then,
I’m sorry for being so vain,
I’m sorry for assuming
You had stormed away
Because you couldn’t stand
Me blaming myself.

I now understand
That you were wounded
By the word
'Worse'.)