She faces the wall, studies
those tiles with minute precision, hand
outstretched on the towel rack, a bathroom
ballet dancer, poised, still, silently waiting
waiting, waiting.

Lids so heavy, slow now to blink,
suffocating breath with light caught,
suffocating speech with the skin
pulled taut.

Is it safe yet to face
that most sibilant refraction,
why do these fingers clench tighter
the more I try to let go.

You are but skin and hair
and taut bone stretched simple
over the expanse of what was once.

We lay you to earth, brothers
smiling on the surface, beneath
fuming currents we carry on.

Carry on
we carry you on
in our heads and furtive glances
at the past, now.

What is this?

This mass of magma, bubbling
between silence and laughter

between
life and death.

We either fall

or we fly and there's no

no plateau on which to lay

to rest our heavy heads, hurtling

between each inevitable

windburntbloodscreamingcoursing

drop

and every

goddamnbreathbaringasphyxiating

                                                                  elevation.

Gravity rips raindrops from
the sky to the earth of my face,
as your fingertips violate the soft
skin of each cheek I offer.

You tell me, I make you so happy,
as salt flows viscous in the pitch
of our bedroom and I say nothing
and you say, nothing much, either.

I bring colour to a life you have never led
and I punish you for it with my silence
and my soft steps and my one single smile,
bequeathed so very grudgingly.

You try, it's true, but I am too far gone now,
too lost in her eyes as she looks at this
shadow of you that I have readily created,
this masochistic need to hurt myself.

I love you; it's times like these I know it
best, the times when I am so insubstantial
that I cannot even bring myself to speak
words I am bleeding to scream at you.

What sick love is this?
When the only time I am sure of it,
is when I feel so very very very
unsteady in your palm.

The night slinks away, with the full force
of sunlight unrefined burning
through slotted blinds.

So ends the the first time I have slept with
someone whilst tears leak from my eyes,
and I cannot say I will ever do it again.

The maelstrom circles, patient, waiting,
lurking ever beneath my still water smiles,
ripples never to reach the shore.

As I slip a little closer; cold, I can feel -
oh yes, that blessed razor-sweet breath
burning hot against my tongue, tripping and -

and I can see you're back, burning eyelids
with our tender-stemmed secrets, always
all too ready to explode forth, exhale,

but today you sit there, still here, always -
maybe, perhaps, incessantly, please

I do not want forever, yet I pray,
stay, stay sweet, just for now
we could be nice.

My hands are tongue-tied, my mouth
a shutter that ***** open in the wind;
empty words parade their ground but I

think now before I speak.

You watch my movements, tracking each
for the abnormal; waiting for me to mess up
and forget to hide these crimes

you so carefully cultivated.

I jump in the darkness, so you see things
which are not there; shivering screaming
silence, spoken aloud only when

your distance we both share.

The water falling washes over skin
as supple as your silence,
as I sit and I write and you
simmer still in your thoughts,
thoughts always of her.