very easy to soak in blue
as though a blanket made of shades,
the horrid, musty
smell of your own inertia,
the well that lengthens
inside, perhaps your ribcage
extending, cracking each time
you know you are breathing,
arrhythmic ticks in blue, blue,

but yellow, shapes seep
through your semi-conscious gauze,
name of the day, its contents page
slaps the window like rain-pellets
and the dust
                     trickles into
                                        a trench
                     of forgotten
history, and you can see lilies,
yellow glyphs, the way they ****
their heads  in the breeze; it is a greeting.

if no answers, the sea calls.
watch how it rushes in to greet,
its translucent syntax spilling
over the toes, splashing the ankles,
leaving its transitory glisten for you.

a tepid breeze between fingers,
count each intake of breath,
every time the waves respire
and become reborn, and you sigh
along with them, coastal air

loading your lungs, the blood orange
sun on its indolent slide
to the horizon’s other side,
your language of logograms
the response, to keep going.

what has become of this,
maybe to arrange the words before me
attach them as if a jigsaw with
no picture or meaning,
no analysis necessary
for before you know it,
they dry, start to crumble
as if made with the cheapest materials,
not to be seen again
by any pair of tired eyes,
minds wasted on what could’ve been.

Take me where your voice
is diamonds
but not diamonds, not really,
not as hard

but hopefully you know
what I mean,
a place I can smilingly float on
your lyrical clouds,

where I can taste the stardust,
where rain murmurs
on my tongue like a hundred
secrets

and Saturdays could be Sundays
or midnight
is our daybreak, orange crescent
sunlight on your cheeks,

so I can inhale as though
it’s something new,
an invention my body just made
and how delicious

to have your daisy-chain of words
or some other’s words
but from your throat, you know,
to breathe in,

sanctify my lungs, my brain,
I’ll thank you for it,
tell you they remind me of jewels so
I can keep on getting by.

I’ll go AWAY AWAY
           sensation of growing up
AWAY for regeneration        razzle-dazzle new me

            migraine thunderbolt     give way
            AWAY to cold air
                                      gulpfuls under
stars   AWAY   nightfall’s unreachable token

if AWAY means AWAY means new
   faces
   means I’m not the I
I was   cannot be   anymore

   it’s cherry fizz     between synapses
burbling blood      AWAY   with
   my intimate thrill

                got to get AWAY
like properly AWAY
                rid angsty clots
years leak if
                        you let them

AWAY is the way
     must be a planet
           whose only frosted   touch     is     mine

   stagnation is   a no
AWAY to fresh   sensation
like skin     of     a stranger

Maybe next year I'll tell you
I love you, the platonic type,
the words light from my mouth
as though constructed from bubbles
and you could be there, set to let them
pop against your tongue, maybe reciprocate.

The other type, I've heard, resembles falling,
but does that feel like floating, your body
when dancing, suspended in air for
a cluster of seconds before caught
by your sequinned partner, all smiles,
or is it more sinking,

we did this at primary school a few times,
the chilly, barefeet-plastered hall floor,
told to close our eyes and gently melt,
pretending we're chocolate in a microwave,
every boneless portion hopeless, floppy
until our teacher revived us with her sound.

Otherwise, it could be a tumbling of sorts,
a trip-on-the-first-step-smash-every-limb-kind,
skin blotches that gasp in agony with a touch,
your mistake stains in violet tones, or,
if executed with a more Wonka flourish,
just lust in the blood. Perhaps you'd bleed pink.

Like I know the feeling anyway.
If the words in my throat are
painted with truth, I'll say it, mean it
and breathe or let embarrassment
crush me in its reptilian silver claws.
You might even say it back, platonic or not,

even if I don't know you much,
even if my bedtime is your breakfast
and you handle cutlery better
and don't mind my eczema if you ever
see it on a fuzzy screen or body to body.
Even if my lips have never known what to do.

You make me miss something
I never had, every crushing syllable
like a wave from a faraway place,

our footprints the day’s tale,
curling as though ribbons
into a drenched chasm of lost stories.

Just like all things, this must end;
photograph-faded, awkwardly torn,
smudged by a briny thumb

so the memory half-warps
and could we remember it anyway?
Maybe this is supposed

to be, just now, one of us
to explain with crimped fingertips,
the other gone before it began.