Back at the start for the last time.
I get our drinks before you arrive,
£1.10 more expensive than when
we began dating, which sounds strange,
that word, ‘dating’,
it was only convening for cider,
a JD and coke twice a week after work,
you correcting the spelling
of children born post-Miracle of Istanbul,
me in front of a screen
splattered with numbers
imperative to any name but mine.

Now it was amicable.
Before, not at all.
A sort of swell inside me,
a boiling kettle, the shock tiptoeing through me
when you said enough.
I wanted to hurt you. Absurd.
I felt an uninvited sensation,
a sanding of the ribs,
a brain stapled again and again.
Later, I discovered you felt it too,
if not more so. I softened
like a block of fudge in the heat,
the fury dissipating as cigarette smoke.

You walk in; I get a different shock,
a cold jolt inside me, a voice that says
within an hour it will be over,
a footnote on the CV of my twenties,
April 2013 - October 2016.
You look great, more of an effort than me.
Lately, I’ve let myself go, no surprise.
We talk and laugh. I ought to shave, I know.
Joke about late-night Monopoly,
a fraction of our love, always ours.
The realisation it is a first time last date,
the closing of the door, the final word.

For a second, I am enthralled
at the thought of you, naked,
standing in the doorway to my room,
chestnut hair shimmying down your back.
It won’t occur again, not in that room,
not in that flat, not anywhere
besides a flicker of memory.

Our friends are getting married.
We’re not.
I think we both knew
it would crumble before long,
our relationship a headache tablet
dissolving speck by speck.
Pool, like we used to? you say.
Sure. Three games, I win two one.
Could we restart? Turn it off then on again?
I dare not ask.

I leave you to get the tube from Chalk Farm
as the half-blotto strangers
blare delight at an Arsenal goal.
A hug is too awkward,
shaking hands even worse,
but a hug is the gift. No kiss.
Seven seconds.
The back of you is how
I’ll remember you, walking away,
hands in pockets,
not looking back.

Oh if you don't stretch you'll rot
and if you don't talk you'll sink

what a predicament, a quandary
with that rainmaker sound
counting down to the final trickle
when you offer nothing that glows

there'll be faces drenched in confusion
and you'll taste the shadows
so familiar but like oil in the veins

give me that dynamite answer
stop the gurgle of decay
leaving you with a limp

let the responses pour forth
a fountain of spot-ons
or close enoughs

Early morning drive,
the blur of landscape
past my eyes,
vacant fields,
stationary trees,
and here in these crooked hours
between the first papercut of light
and the salutation of sun
are when the memories assault me,
a ripple of echos,
champagne hair,
a voice drizzled in alcohol
and venom on her tongue.
I’d be rotated, a personal Picasso,
and I clutch the steering wheel,
the pulse of something strange
thuddering deep in my ear.

And there it was.
Static streak of animal,
collecting feathers of snow.

I came across it on the walk home,
frozen bite of early evening
scrunching my bones.

Almost hit him with a foot,
my eyes adjusting to the sight
of a defunct hunk of fur.

Eyes like bullets of liquorice,
slack jaw and an ice-cream scoop
wound, a flush of sickly crimson.

That night I thought of it,
fantastic, an orange flurry
between trees.

A day later, with rock-heavy eyes,
a head swollen with cold,
I walked the way of before.

People nodded hello,
the path draped in a translucent drool
but the animal had gone,

hauled from its bed of death,
its memory a blemish of ruby
on a beach of boundless white.

My head against your neck, I am breathing you in. I am breathing
                                                       ­                                             you
                ­                                                                 ­                   in
and I feel transported to somewhere that isn’t where we are, your shapes welded into my memory as though building a house where each brick is another moment. A moment. That shimmers when light slathers its face, that quivers with a sound when we speak of things that nobody else needs to know. Doorbell rings, dog bark, jangle of rain on the roof. Our spider web of memories a pearly glisten. It’s nice to be an ours and not a theirs. Sunflower voice on my lip.  This is a private matter, a fragment in the shadows where we play play play. You are my shadow. My shadow. Magic dust, body of the night. Touching you is like a snowflake wickedly intricate in my palm. Look at you in my midday dreams, a spicy smirk, bringing your own brand of pandemonium. Bloodshot eye red, a day on fire. You don’t know you do this, no no, ain’t that the way. I still breathe you in. Ain’t that the way. Inhale, inhale, I say your name as if its clockwork, regular and there, my seconds, my hours.

la la la la
is this what love feels like

or what I want it
to feel like when it comes
slam-bamming in

the snigger on the stairs
first saxophone note

my throat
knows the right words
speak
of succulent fruits
count the seconds
it takes
for our fingers to crumple
in warm baths

look
toothbrushes together
own side of the bed
I have a side
where I sleep
in the madness of you

la la la la
I can’t sing
but I must have swallowed a pill
or a bucketful
of elation
look at me go ha ha

does it crunch as an apple
is it flat pack furniture

cup of coffee
in the same café
steam to sip sip sip

my temperature spiking
blood thunderstorm
in my ears

coloured hair
new language
list of I’m becomings
you’re becomings

oh darling
not pumpkin never pumpkin
lyrically I’m losing it
love like this
or not at all my love

maybe a shelf
without books

maybe a house we paint
or a song
how it starts

I find myself here, by choice,
the swells of heat between duvet
and body and your body,
naked except for a gold necklace
half sunken in light
from the bedside lamp.
My skin is slick and unpleasant,
my toes knock yours
in the space we can’t see.

Not the first time, not really,
but the first time here.
A different mattress, pillow,
shapes that before were yours
and yours alone
but you’ve let me in,
a secret place to many
with frosted grape walls
and your name
blaring ornamental from a shelf,
seen by only one man besides me.
You told me who.
The blistered image of you
with a stranger
in the place I’m now in
makes my throat sting
a little,
makes my muscles tense
as though about to
run the hundred metres.

You look at me,
tangled in white,
a tattoo of a flower
I don’t know on your shoulder,
moving when you move,
a grey filling
clamped in a tooth
at the back of your smile.
How strange, perhaps,
I notice this now,
I didn’t before.
I wasn’t looking.