It's an echo of war

a battle no-one can
remember fighting

or winning

but we know that
we are the
losers

somehow

even if we can't
see it

It's five-thirty
when I walk
barefoot and
hesitant

eyes wide open
against the
dark

towards the place
I last kissed
you

I can hear
your lungs
lift and fall

lift and fall

like I fell
for you

I am wearing
one of your
shirts

it's sleeves hang
loose

I can almost
wrap them
around me
twice

my stomach
clenches and thinks
of breakfast

cups of coffee
and newspapers
to argue over

our kitchen is
bright and clean
red gingham curtains
like the ones
little girls

dream of

scrubbed wooden
table and chairs

each with a leg
that needs to
rest upon
a book

I'll pass you the
milk and sugar

smile into
my cereal
bowl

tell you where
you left you
car keys

stand in the
doorway waving
you off to work

I reach down
through the black-
ness

to where I think
your blanket
is

searching for the
soft corner of
warmth

my fingers touch
nothing but
air

my feet are
freezing

I hear the clock
strike six

and wake
up

There are easier ways to die

I told him
over steaming
cups of tea
that we cradled
and tended to like
children

he would have me
wandering, crawling
from room to room,
like a beast consumed
with the hunger for
dead meat

I've heard him talking
to himself at night,
sitting, smoking,
staring out at stars

I know I've left
scars on his heart

his eyes blue
from the effort
of trying to
to break

but I wake up
each morning,
checking my hair
before I touch
his face

I let him sleep
and take the pillow
case off, shred it
with my hands,
burn it with the
hate that rises
like heat inside
me when I know
that it will be
the same
tomorrow

we used to
fit into each
other effortlessly

now my bones
stick out and
catch the small
of his back like
a spike

six more months
they say and all I
see is my skin
sagging, my stomach
sinking, my heart
beating less and
less

it hurts to know
he hates the things
I think, the thoughts
I can't make him see

There are easier ways to die

than to be eaten
bit by bit
to the bone

Ink runs from the end of my fingers
as easily as blood trickles out
of a wound

spitting words that melt
in the air

teeth blackened by
the ashes of prose

I would swallow them
down if I could

but each one
bangs on the back
of my closed lips

begging to be
free

to fly off
my tongue
into nothing-
ness

Twig by twig
we built our home
like birds

in the winter
we froze
together in a
raindrop

our faces
suspended forever
inside a tear

branches sway
in the breeze and
we fight

to remain

here

in the air

where we can
refrigerate
our hearts

pretending not to
feel the wind
ripping our skin
apart

and the rot
that grows
in the cracks

This is where
our idle walking
ends

the crunch of
winter leaves
beneath our boots

stops

we reach a kissing
gate that tells us
we're in

memory

when our thoughts
met with kindness

soft whispers
in the soil

hearts planted
so deeply that
even the storms
do not shake them

one of our hands
reaching for the
other, to touch,
to bruise

scratching, crawling
out from the Earth
like a dead
thing

utterly mad
but strangely
beautiful

They say that death isn't a disease,
that you can't spread it
like a virus
from mouth to mouth
or in a blown kiss

but each time I touch your skin
I hear my heart in my head
blood pulsing, lightly at first
But fiercer the longer my fingers
lick the shell of you
like flames

I look into your eyes, sometimes
despite myself
and see the burst blood vessels
spread out like a drop of paint
in a puddle

I know that our hearts
are about to give up on us
and that it will be
no lightning bolt
of passion
of bursting love
of feeling too much

they will just die
like a story dies
when there is no-one left
to listen to it

I can't help but think
of the life we
could have had
if we'd waited

instead of clinging madly
onto each other
desperate to shake off
the fever of the last ones
we'd touched