The night we first slept together was election night,
the reds against the blues against the yellows against the greens.
We both picked the same colour, I found out,
sipping coffee, scolding tongues at that place on the corner
where you can chuck in some scran while you’re at it.

Here’s a cliché, but true: one thing led to another.
A DiCaprio movie I barely recall, a dreich day
umbrella-sharing as we charged back down Arthur’s Seat.
I wondered if Hibs won, you thought if my hand in your hand
meant we were comfortable, easing ourselves into each other
as if trying on a new pair of boots.

There was ***, but that’s personal.
It was at your place. The sleep.
After it was over, our throats aching with lust, you went
to the bathroom in your pricy Primark knickers,
spine ablaze with light, and I revelled in the deliciousness
of your not-quite-**** body, knew we’d started something,
knocked the first domino down.

In the morning, we’d reached an impasse.
The TV blared out no surprises.
My eyes discovered an unfamiliar ceiling,
you wore an iron-soon shirt, white, nothing else
as the coffee machine spluttered its language.
A one-night thing? I thought so, eyes punctuated
with crooked red hyphens. I didn’t know my toothbrush
would be there in months, my face again in the mirror.

Spain in the core of summer
   thermometer under pressure

nosebleed heat
  skin butter-knifed with sweat

you having just arrived
   from the city with the Moorish palace

where I’d walked
  less than forty-eight hours before

do not ask me how to define love
   because it was not love

love takes longer
  photos doused in a darkroom

this was the first murmurings
  of something wildly unfamiliar

swirl of a heart
  on the roof of my coffee

when you spotted
   The Sun Also Rises

and sat before I had a chance
  to take that initial sip

hair like vanilla
   lips a tone of rust

and the city
   became the story we wrote

unravelling my r’s
   difference between perro and pollo

the switch from Picasso
   blue to pink

that first night
   I revised your body

as a saxophone
  squawked in a crowded room

the litmus test
   for what I’ve said wasn’t love

but the inaugural snapshot
   in a slideshow

of a summer
   of torso-clinging humidity

of siestas with four feet
   pecking the end of my bed

after much deliberation,
you’ve decided on eggs
for breakfast.

standing by the counter,
eviscerated yolks in the bowl
fascinate you.

I offer, you slowly
churn the lemon mush.
four hands

then tilt our concoction,
dash of pepper, full stop of salt,
into the pan.

cooking solar system
coagulates, cloudy creature
you eye up

as I flop it onto your plate,
fork ready set
to burrow in.

Here at the Riesenrad,
black Eckelberg eye
observes violinists.
There, a choir of mustard leaves,
swirls of Ich and du
clog the air, night blanketing us
in a filmic noir.

Here, the chalky bracket of the Hofburg extends its arms
as if embracing us.
Inside: glinting-finger chandeliers,
ensembles of books
like lungs of rust,
children toddling past
with goldfish mouths.

Here, a café, early morning,
lemon light sweeping through the windows,
gurgle of students, old men
with a steaming großer Brauner,
a wrinkled Die Presse on the table,
****** of tablespoons at breakfast
and simmer of strings at evening.

And it was here, in ’67,
post-they-think-it’s-all-over,
where a barefoot brunette
sang a tune about puppets;
now our hearts tick
to an orchestral melody.

So here, under a periwinkle sky,
students with Zweig on their minds,
sizzle of German on their tongues
continue on their way, as do we,
footsteps waltzing through
the heart of Europe.

I will post you my name.
I’ve been meaning to.
That way I can stain you

like blackberries would,
a fresh, juicy punnet of them
bought that very day,

your lips stippled violet
and the single syllable you read
the dizzy sprint of sugar.

I swallow your silence,
the one ubiquitous drink
in this maelstrom of ambivalence,

see-saw of coming and going
as if elastic bands
snapped back

before we clinch what we need.
If I think, submerse myself
in the small pool of memories

in a sixteenth of the brain
occupied by you, I can almost recall
the waves of your voice,

each inflection, and your face;
now that, honestly, tricky somehow.
The weeks become a sludge,

each day with its own
carcinogenic tint,
pollution plumes.

What date shall I red-circle, our reunification?
We’ll clutch at our throats,
gasp at how little has passed.

At it for five minutes, maybe six,
and we’re watching them both
from our go-to spot in the King’s Horses
across the street, transfixed
by this unscripted drama unfurling
before our eyes, a right old spat
between, presumably, students
on the lash, straight outta Camden.

I’m clutching my last fifth of pint
as if it’s the final swig I’ll ever savour,
the rest of the pub’s regulars and stragglers
oblivious, minds on the mundane,
such water-cooler coffee-machine gabble,
but we’ve tuned into the action,
silent theatre, much gesticulation,
coatless girls impervious to the chill.

I blink, I turn, a rookie blunder
for in that barely a second speck
you’ve flung the ready salted to one side,
a gasp spilling from your cherry-red mouth
as the chick on the left has arched back,
propelled a fist, thwacked her prey,
one hit and I missed it, the evening’s highlight
unrecorded with no live rewind.

Ten seconds pass. I have birthed a long sigh,
both felines having scarpered,
one nursing their wound, bruise to be.
I let the last, flavourless dreg of Carling
slide past the tonsils before we make to leave,
recover from the unexpected, single wallop
to the chops, Friday night morsel of excitement.
I chuckle about it, privately, as I head for a wazz.