Last night
I held out my palm
to catch hailstones

to store under floorboards
where all bad things are kept
like spoiled apples,

letters paralysed by tears,
junk I bought
then jammed into toasters

so at least I could say
I put them somewhere.

It feels chillier
when nobody's about,
and the roads

and alleyways
are clogged
with silence,

the inescapable
winter blackness.

I find your name
on my window
drooling away,

a skeletal row
of faded transparent roots
and when I woke

I desperately wished
you had put it there.