If I’ve sent you a poem
Would you kindly send it back?
I feel that I have spread my soul too widely
That I am buttered across the nation
The internet
The streets
If you hold a piece of me on your computer
In your box of special things
In your heart
I beg you send it back to me
So I can sew myself into one
Patchwork of poems.

If they are shredded, or torn at the seams
I care not
I will use any means
To stitch, stick or paste
My parcelled-out soul
Back into place.

At the end of all things, there will always be
You and I, dear – and our little story.

There will still be, at hand,
the time you spun me round to dance
– at the same time
I spun you round to dance –
in a little, stardusted, pocket of memory
in the black coat of the universe.

The curse of remembering, is
Our lovers’ loving curse.

It happened – we can always retrieve
Our little fairy story, the story we craft for the world,
Then leave.

At the end of it all, if we are not here
in our compact, glittering world of Each Other;
Even if my memory is riddled with
the little worms of age,
There will always be a part of my young self
Trapped in that giant’s pocket with your young self.
That spiral-bound Tale of Us
Sitting on my third bookshelf.

Well met by moonlight we, like painted birds
Wing through the winking dark. In the half-light
Of looming streetlamps, and a bond, cast new.
Birds of a feather we, skipping in our
High heeled boots, songs dripping from our ginned tongues.

Fledglings; two young things painting the sky, and
It bends around us. Together we fly.

Since that first blue night of scrabbling through the
Waning light, you’ve been a strong branch, an
Essential part of my wavering nest.

All I have is gratitude, lay it at
Your feet. A hand to hold your spirit up.
My preening blackbird, you will always be
A poem-tongued and twilit queen to me.