Your leaving
Scribbled ripples
In my bedsheets
A tragedy in drapery.

Where between each fold
crashed
       sighed sonnets,
and from
every ruffle
poured
our trickled
        love notes.

And the swell of your
hips unmade
my bed into tussled art.
And the peach
of your lips
drew a tide of
ache
   from mine.

Now I ache
  in my reading
   the brushstrokes
        of your absence.

Slender
you wear
a palatine Ivory
beneath your dress.
I trace the sea of your eyes
with mine.
As you catch your lip between teeth
and tilt your head, beaconing
my gaze with yours.

your smile unbuttons my shirt
and you twist, the wings of your hips,
Urgent, seek my grip.
We find a bedroom.
My back finds the burnished brick
as you push me to it
your hands lead mine
to curve of your waist,
to the loops in your lace.
and all is undone.

Lips sink to neck, to shoulder
To breast, to the pink betwixt your ivory.
and soon we are sundered on linen sheets
like tulip petals after a storm.

China blue evensong
white egg moon, birds nest night
frost gilt grass shivers.

folded sunny side
Golden bellied bottle kiss
ruddy bubbles burst

You wore a paper white quiet
like the spaces between      
words
And that’s when I realised
that we-
Are a misprint
unique, beautiful in a way
but never now to be.

Ancient leviathan,
City in sands
Razed in a roar.
Now silence stands

Taller than your
Pillars did before
As the world looks on
It can’t but abhor

Let sleep find your
Great arches now
Though brought down
They did not bow

For their shadows
Outstretch the hand of man
And the rote of
All religion’s plans.

They did not destroy!
They have not won!
And in undoing
Become
undone.

We are enfolded
by silences;
your bags waiting to leave,
my begging eyes,
but the greatest silence
was
the absence
of your breath
in the
     Night...