I loved you at the first of dawns,
the first of lights,
when in damp, green darkness
a first of seeds cracked open
by the incredidle warmth of -

I loved you at the first of noises,
when, fallen from the sky,
something pure was ripped open
and forever spoilt.
a scream the birth of pain,

and when, in the night you came alive
blood started flowing through your veins like
the waters licking the earth
hungrily.

I love you now,
it's crooked limbs
stretched eternally onward like gum,
a hummingbird's golden lustre in stasis.

When I silently love you tomorrow,
and all of the embers
have turned brittle like bone dust,
between the falling stars
into the great sea,
in a constellation will whisper
the lovers and the sun.

Show me everything.
For weeks I've been trying to get the words across my lips,
trying to break your clenched-teeth silence,
the stillness in us, orbiting in astral planes -
but I do try, standing in empty stairwells,
open doors and vacant rooms. If you try, I do not know.

Show me everything.
Show me that scar below your navel where they cut you open,
laid to rest these hands that take their own turn cutting. Where breathing is machinery and living is a mess of tangled lines, where stealing away is not permitted for god help us if it makes anyone feel bad. So me and you carry the pain instead.

Show me everything -
a future I can hold protected, a light in the window across the street while I stand, in darkness, surrounded by expensive plastic things. Sometimes, for a fraction of time, I see that light in your eyes, a whisper of something tiny and sacred. A promise with a living, beating heart. I try to speak, but no words will come, and when they do, time has passed us by again, alone in a stairwell, in a dark supply room, in a room of machinery and robotic breaths.

Have a good shift, then.

This is the only poem I'll ever write about you.
I thought there wasn't enough time, but then it was so quick to do.
Three t-shirts. One pair of pants.
That waffle iron that you left here once, and always meant to take home -
but you never did, because who knows when the craving might hit us.

I can forgive.
If that is what you want me to do -
if that is what you need.
I'm full of forgiveness for you already,
full of a gentle compassion,
of knowing we are both stuck,
and haven't been ready,
and maybe still aren't.

They way your spine curves under my fingertips,
the change of tone in your voice when you're joking,
an invisible smile
mirroring in your eyes,
floating,
like fog over water at dawn.

In the parish garden behind my house
they have stacked up the benches now
from dead sunday,
then easter.
The last of the soft light
of an april day
gently grazing the young grass.
Ashes falling from a balcony,
settling on the ground in a whisper,
as if the world has unanimously decided
on stillness for today.

green cotton threads
have you switched professions?
Heres that amlodipine you asked for -
grazing my fingers,
you can explain it better than me.
Where do I end up
if I keep writing about every single one
of our encounters?