You asked if I was pretending to type
But the sounds are real
The words
are real too

I have never sat down
At any keyboard
With any pen
To write fake words
Across paper and screens
Setting up words and letters like
Puppets in a play, dancing across a cardboard set
Human hands making them move in a mockery

Anything I’ve ever written
Has lived and had a life
Nothing that I’ve written or will write in your presence
Will be without substance
Or marionettes on string, dancing for you  


No, my love,
They live and come alive
Because we believe in them.

Isn’t physically quick or agile.

Disappears in libraries.

Has been known to dissolve into the physical pages of books.

Is good at tucking herself into the stacks and retreating to reading nooks.

Blends in at coffee shops where her voice can be drowned out by the grinding and the steaming.

Can become indistinguishable in the dark of theatres, in the quiet shuffle of art galleries, the finger-snapping of poetry readings, the hum and jostle of the Tube.

Is indistinct. Adept at hiding in plain sight.

The sun on my tongue tastes

like home, like childhood, like all the happy parts,

like warm syrup running down my spine

and my worn feet, on grass, thistles, bluebells, your bed,

springing up to touch the wooden ceiling

later to be found peaking out from the duvet

as I was waking up to rain early

and smoke from the chimney across the way

and looking over to see, on the night stand, steaming tea and sticky-sweet buns

that taste like the sun, and you.

My home is made of grit and dirt

The taps run sweat,

the windows are shattered,

their glass clinging to frames

like broken teeth to gums in the mouth of a boxer.

My town is a fighter,

built of scrap metal and machines.

The streets are steel

and the river nuts and bolts,

its gears turn through rust

and parts corrode away.

Time turns it green, orange,

black with oil and grime,

but my city is a fighter,

made of grit and dirt,

and it lives.

Our favourite diner
closed its doors two years ago
we can no longer walk in from the cold
feeling the warmth of syrup and coffee cups

Our favourite diner
closed its doors two years ago
and that server we liked so much
we haven't seen him since
and no where else has real carnations
in milk glass vases on every enamel table

Our favourite diner
closed its doors two years ago
it smelled like a Church basement,
felt like my uncle's house
and it was our place, it was what we did

Our favourite diner
closed its doors two years ago
and so we stopped going out for brunch
on Saturdays
we made new traditions
but they were never as good
And we both knew it

Our favourite diner
closed its door two years ago
and so did we.

Always dusk

Quilts like capes and

saying sweet goodbye - cheek kisses to summer,

August draws into September,

where seams don’t matter and everything changes colour.

We suddenly stop running and sit,

our youngness ages like the leaves

and our quilts gather dust

Laying on piled spines,
pages as blankets,
we stack books against the sun

so we can dream sweetly through the morning.

And when we're rested,
we can take down these bricks we've laid, one at a time,
the brightness of the sky filling our space, strip by strip.

We will take the stories from their towers
read them together,
and then decide
that it's far better to be awake in the light
than to be only a shared dream.

Our bodies are great things

Despite our hate and years

of alcohol and poison and mocking words

our bodies still stand and work

When our souls

crawled under our own darkness

And we certainly thought we could not continue on

Our bodies picked us up and kept moving



The hills and large parts of our bodies

Holding memories of all we've ate and said and done



The bones of us

Keeping us up and laying us down

Our skin, covering all the oddest parts of us

Our brains, the only machines

to create cures for themselves

Our bodies are great things

Our cases and our cages

Holding us together

Keeping us in.

I will settle in to the storms and waves
And find peace in the gaps

The spaces between set-up and torn-down

From cliff to cliff
We’ll find heart in the air that separates
where we were to the places we are going

On the dampest days,

I miss you enough to fabricate you.

Years worth of my heart’s energy invested into the study of making matter,

Of bringing it across an ocean

to reassemble near the maples and the bush

and on paper and cards, across a board of letters we catch up and play and paint,

just the same.