Newspapers are only covered in ***** print;

of despair and distress and danger playing master of our moves.

So I can’t talk to you through that.


Paintings are for love songs left unsung;

they are the inner kept journals of unrequited dreams,

scrawls of abuse or lumps of hurt, growing like tumours.

You wouldn’t understand.

So I can’t talk to you through that.


Music is only for the sunlit realm of lovers found;

of certainty and confidence and devotion above the sordid,

tangled affairs of wayward souls.

Living in a fantasy to escape the loneliness aching in soft spots inside.

So I can’t talk to you through that.


Letters are lost in nostalgia;

a celebration to be had, words unspoken for decades,

births and deaths, reserved for life events detailed in the past.

So I can’t talk to you through that.


Movies are just reenactments of dreams;

stunning heroes, masters of skill, justice seekers,

adventures of awe, loves broken but patched together with stronger yarn.

A world of little lies to helps better cope with heartache and grief.

We can’t immortalise ourselves in something

when it runs the risk of breaking.

So I can’t talk to you through that.


But I can do something much harder

then writing or filming or singing or painting…

I can give it all up, over to you.

I can trace patterns across your shoulders as you wake,

our special language which tells you I love you, I’m trying to trust you.

I can write you little notes, decadent words and sultry ideas,

and make a trail for you to follow to me.


I can be vulnerable in your arms, more than skin and internals

and a framework of bones.

I can be more real with you than I have never known to be possible.

It’s not just me showing how much I need you by the length I hold your kiss,

or how long it takes for us to disentangle ourselves from sleep, how often

we see each other naked.


It’s more the heart I dare draw on your skin with my lips.