We talk, and the cigarette burns in small moments of waiting. You move your finger from my vest strap to my collarbone. My breath catches, slides into a warm pool of want. I slip my own finger in circles at its edge, and you take a step closer.

We built a little night
but you emptied it.

Your Dublin beachhead
is all undertow.

Dead menus blow from
one gutter to the next.

Westward parks
fill with fever.

A gibbeted sun
hangs ignored.

O darling...
I'm not this way,

I'm not this way -
remember what I am.

I watch you spark up. A small frown grows deep, then disappears when you inhale. Whole moments pass, and you hold that new smoke in your lungs. You are shuttered, you are gone. I like that you return to me first. Even before your eyes are fully open you find me; warm and backlit through lids, a ghost through dark lashes.  

You reach for me, run a finger under my vest strap. I like that you switch the cigarette to your left hand and don’t seem to notice. The ember-glow dances and sways. Smoke spills up in a silver ribbon when you exhale.

I’m in filthy jeans and vest, muddy boots tucked under a bar stool. I'm sun-sore across my shoulders and neck, with dirt-dust clung to me, all over. My hair’s graded real short because men like it long, and I’m so done with them. I wonder briefly, through this haze of hormones and *****, if maybe there's a woman for me. I’ve stayed too late. Workwear’s gone home, showered, got changed. I’m alone. I’m the wrecked remains of Monday-through-Friday in this sparkling sea. I ache. I really ache. I should leave, but you buy me one more drink and I stay.

I packed it away for the fourth
or fifth time tonight, moving it
between the boxes, cotton cherries
spilling in hands, thinking about the selfie
you sent from the dressing room,
like an audition. You needn't've:
you already had what you wanted.
Now I send the dress back to Dublin
with your other things, because
I don't think you're coming back here.
That thought comes out hard - touches
some places that don't like touching.
I'm wracked long, long into the evening.
Please, come back for this dress -
wear it and come out with me,
we'll go back to our secret square,
just like years ago you can tell me
about the snow brothel again,
I'll eat all your pheromones
& make little moves towards you
in your lover's skin -
white dress with cherries.

Lips and fingers, shuttered glance -
click, quick lick extinguished.

(I’m sure it’s wrong to view this as impending beauty)

He turns - avoids tide-salt breeze made
fast by alleyway and dark.

Again - click, quick lick. Hand’s a shield,
spark’s hidden, can still feel it.

(Behind closed-door words fly; heard and unheard)

We're here, lost and found inside his ritual.

i can still feel it — the ghostly echo of storm clouds it in my throat, now dry and emptied of the softest sighs. they all had fallen on my flower-bed skin, pristine as the petals that once were. or so i pretend. i can still feel it in my throat: the storm, looming. the calm drowning itself, and its haunting, beckoning call to which my feet slowly walk.

some days, it's just you and the uncharted depths of your own skin.

some days, you can bother with poems — some days, you can only drown.