Telephone wires are tangled in the trees tonight
and the stars are copper colour,
as if scattered from a fountain
and Romeo is calling from beneath the balcony
of the Capulet family in Verona,
trying to get reception-

but the receiver is busy
moving on, and growing up-

Juliet, the girl he is calling, has a new phone
that she doesn't trust with unfamiliar numbers,
and his is listed 'unknown'

Unsent messages: "goodnight
"goodnight- parting is such sweet sorrow,
that I shall say good night till it be morrow."

The story of the star-cross'd lovers was no tragedy at is end.
Nobody died, nobody had to pretend
to die. They rarely think of one another now,
only from time to time do they wonder 'what if'
or regret the absence of a real goodbye.

Romeo never got the chance to defy the stars
Juliet never got the chance to contemplate him cut out in them
and neither of them got the chance to commit,
and neither of them took a chance with suicide.

Telephone wires in trees, copper stars-
-ghosts, wished on, shooting, burning far, far away-

Unspoken words: "some consequence
yet hanging in the stars,
auspicious stars"

(the fairest of them, he'd once found in her eyes)-
no reception, nothing received.
In this love story, nobody dies.

It is remembered as any other night before.
It was not long until where Romeo had come and gone
he'd left behind just a flicker of a frisson
in memory, growing distant,
gradual decay, and then
he was nothing more than threads to weave
the patchwork of a dream,-
hard to recall, a close call,
a near miss, a could-have been-
but it was harder, with time, to believe it was ever
the real love she yet knew nothing of
at the keen age of only thirteen.

It was Paris she fell for. The two were to marry
and for her bouquet that day, the flower she chose
to carry- for their romance and sweetness-
was the rose, and in her vows, she spoke of her love
being boundless and deep as the sea,
and infinite. All the wishes he'd made on stars
and coins in fountains had come to be.

Spoken words: "Have I thought long to see this morning's face..."

So many saved lives and one love lost and
a glooming sort of peace settled over
the star-cross'd streets of Verona.

Words in my head grew into my throat,
violent and teeming as weeds
but the moment they disguised themselves with petals
you uprooted them,
pulled out each thought so it wouldn't deceive,
and then

a sigh, tender, as dandelions.
Blown away with a wish.
You left me blossom and
blooming with forget-me-not.

I was plucking at my eyelashes as though petals grew there
and snapping bone structures
into uneven halves-
      giddy on the tilt of things being skewed
       I cut myself where the crossed bones
       met my crossed fingers-
tossed over my shoulder,
salt rubbed into the wound,
I looked up and saw the sky emptied of stars.
All that wishful thinking
(more like superstition, now, than cognition)
grounded on
absolutely
nothing.

A list of images stuck in my mind:

- a well-made metaphor balancing precariously on the rooftop above a cortex
- asymmetry; namely, a piece of abstract art in a rectangular gilded frame, depicting three oranges in a disarray on a crumpled hectic tablecloth
- angry black stars twinkling ferociously in the periphery
- faces, sleeping or watching quietly from every direction, eyes following from the bookcase, the desk, even the blank walls
- the one clam that was not as happy as a clam is supposed to be
- a philosophy problem demanding to know if anyone saw you fall, with its broad chest, and nobody hears

I have stopped retracing my steps backwards
and given up on chasing the echoes
in search of sweet nothings, epiphanies or guitar chords.
I only found everything was back to front
and the wrong way round and found hollows
where I once was, in lecture halls and hospital wards.

When I wake up
my skin will be silver
the wolves won't be hungry
the wind will be sleeping
my back will lie flat across
the lace trim along the edge
of a fading dream and
my pockets will be filled
with pennies
and eyelashes
and wishbones.

Night is like shadows speaking nonsense, exchanging secrets
that rattle between hollowed-out bathtubs and empty beds,

like a wave of dead things and when it comes in
everything is rocking,

like paralysis, being a corpse for a few second at the most but it seems like forever in a dead body that isn't dead yet,

like waiting for what is forced on you,
like being forced to watch,

like lullabies and galaxies and stories spinning on cassettes,
memories and constellations of hypnotic trinkets,

like a room with no windows or doors or way to escape
and it's too dark to see clear or think,

like when the thought escape you, breaking away
with every blink

like a fade-out on a big screen when it i black but not yet the end,

like dreading what  you don't know
how to mend, like dreading what you don't know,
like dreading that you do,

like your night-time hours getting utterly tired of you.