You put your trust in me,
crack open caged ribs and slip
flawless hands into flawed breath.

I close the weeping wounds and
smile up, with innocent face false.

Shush, you give me such a gift
I could never drown and admit
this was not what I asked for.

You place ruptured trust in me
but never wonder of space carved,
a waiting cavern, empty, unadorned.

I stroke the hair at the nape of your neck,
your head sleeps steady on my shoulder.

I lay awake and remember -
recall, recollect, render pieces
of another

whose trust riddled woodworm
promises, once undermining the
structural integrity of my mind.

Still, my hand moves, a sure constant, trapped
between pulling you close and
pushing you away.

So what has become of
the seashells I used to collect on the shore?
do they build up, unfathomable, now my hand
is too busy carving a life unlooked for.

and what become of the arrogance of youth,
they who knew know bounds;
determined to grow as changing as the tides;
that their dance would be the one
to draw the moon ever closer.

now all to hear is gulls screaming incessant songs
as I learn of rhythms that are caught,
a trapped constant between tide and wane,
an age where there is
no magic in this magnificence.

We never dreamt that such small wonder
(of invisible breath that moves the clouds
subtle shifting of the seasons
sunrises and sunsets)
could be so finite.

Nor did we plan
for a life as fractious,
incidental;
shifting grains beneath
unsteady feet.

He is the sun scorching my irises
as I wonder what I ever did to deserve this,
strong saccharine sugar heightening my spine
as the paths of stars and planets finally align.

But sweet dove, what collar now is this?
I thought my eyes were blind to any but his?

That slight smile and how would it feel
to taste that skin, ah this spinning wheel
in my mind, please, stop. Now what trick it this?
He found true love but we overlooked my abyss.

I love him, I do, but that one talk with a stranger
has placed all that we knew in immaculate danger
was it actually my darkness that blinded his irises?
And what has he ever done to deserve this?

No, we are golden and in his arms I will lay
no more thoughts of a stranger, that parody play,
but now sighted eyes most unwillingly perceive
that is it happy, this heart, or is it I that is deceived?

The stars hang sleeping in a salted sky
as faulted feet tread paths worn smooth
all is stilled and all is awry
and the whispers of the wind
have nothing to prove.

The blackness is crushed velvet,
to be caressed with his touch
as distance travelled is at once
precise and all too much

for the stars are awake now
as I lie happy in this taxing grip;
he loves me imperfectly
and we are the sinking ship.

It is tomorrow as I stray solitary
and walk myself awake, standing
on the grass that grows the greenest
on this here higher side
where the moon sleeps on the shadows
above your mud-cloaked body.

This silver orb, so tempestuous,
upon it still can always be relied
whilst here feet find, to be at its fullest elevation,
grass glowing silver and stones a sibilant, sacrificial grey;
as the gravity of that oval brightness
diminishes all other light.

My bare feet ***** down the flora
that grows hopeful from your skin
and up I turn, looking for comfort
in a bare and barren sky
where even the brightest stars,
those thousand sharpened shards
of brittle glass glimmering,
fade too into blackness

as here, cloaked in this shining dark,
I am reminded
that the full fury of the sun rests so still now,
held blind beneath my weary feet.

I don't know if what I am doing classes as living, classes as

enough; for I am all too aware of time passing; standing

attested, arrested by people purely expanding as all I do,

when held against dream's nostalgic playing field and

childhood's uncertain scope of vision; silver concrete

wonder at the world being round, that this life

now tastes uninspired, anaemic;

excessive only in its own

insignificance,

truly.

You miss me.

But still you throw your words
and I get caught up in a hailstorm of paper
shallow but deep cuts
as we fall or fly towards disillusion.

I see you
standing straight on high; heavy with
all the threat of the curve of the earth
and I

must not blink.

And in the darkness miss
your wondrous eruption inevitable
falling, flying

into something more than here,
something more than now,
something more than we.