I’d be content to live it all again:
the two of us blind, falling,

hailing on the city, on each other’s avenues.
Both frostbitten with a beautiful rage,

universally connected but worlds away.
Your footprints ring round my thoughts –

paces that chipped my memory:
Divoted ideas, fictions too deep to fill.

On the steps outside your house,
I coughed up cracked earth.

The desert had taken residence in my chest.
Pale, clammy, I danced

an endless waltz through my ribs –
I lost my way.

Survival clung onto cactus-water and lizards,
I scarcely remembered the streets.

In doubt, I imagined asphalt and stop sign mirages,
glints of ghostly hopes till I felt the hail.

I laughed as it pounded,
lashing my back. Cool, frozen, deft.

I fell asleep, exhausted at your door.
The house lights went out, I dreamed

we could see. And that was what it was:
a dream, a slipping second between similar days,

a nightmare fresh with flowers,
two faint throbs on a deathbed.

I am content to live it all again.