You're a hardback book:
the coffee table photography type that
sits awaiting the agreeable eyes
of someone who likes what is inside.

Can I fall through into your black and white world
and stay there warm until the history books
catch up with me?

Because if I don't I fear I'll forget your face
and if you're ever on a shelf, with a Waterstones
recommendation below, and I fail to notice you
how can I ever learn again?

There is a misdeed where,
on a corner of Hunter Street,
a phone box sits in a puddle
like a flamingo in a storm,
yet it's not pink. It's a dull

shine with legs protruding
out of its sea, a lone oil rig
with an open mouth to enter
in which (you would hope!)
some black gold would pour

out of its receiver and say,
Press your fingers to me,
then my hand to your cheek
and I would stand there
drowned in those thoughts,

my feet also being rig stalks
as I would hold your hand
to my face, my other leaning
against your body, then only
to gather a simple “Hello.”

Hot tar and a thirty-year-old nickle's scent
broke the evergreen air as the bleak moonlight bent
shadows into the semblance of a grated vent.

On my cell phone I repeated what I meant
to a man behind three to four months on rent.
"Three or four thousand, come on Kent,

I'll let it slide for even two. I've lent
and lent and there's a considerable dent
in my wallet." He said the check would be sent

by the next week and remarked, "Time went
out the window. It disappeared in the events
of yesterday and was spent."

A week later a check was present
in my mail. It was crisp and unbent
but was written for "172,800 minutes and no cents."

I called up Kent, that incredulous tenant,
and said, "What is this check? It's content
is silly and makes no sense." "Relent,

relent, it's for four months of pent-
up time that was spent." "Time? The rent
can't be paid with a check to augment

lost minutes!" "You agreed to it before, on my word, as a gent."

I'd blow kisses off
the tips of my fingers
And you'd catch them
in the palms of your hands
Now you avoid puddles
on rainy afternoons
And I spend snow days
catching up on
sleep

You write math equations
in the margins where
you used to scribble music notes
And I write phone numbers
on the backs of receipts
where I used to scribble
sonnets

I think that you will feel better
if I remind you to keep bottles of seawater and a spoonful
of honey on your
bedside for the next time you get sick:
a detox, this will climb into your pores like a
pillow
this will smooth any of the scars in your digestive
system, your fear is in
you like it is a new ***** that is destined
to fail. Sometimes suffering wants to be silent but I have
tried to talk yours down, promise
that it is okay to be
soft
and okay to need to add sweetener to bitter tea
and acknowledge pain like
I do when I imagine myself as a little girl again, palm out
because she knows she is lonely for
someone to hold her hand.  I
pass pills to you, maybe they will stretch out your throat
or decrease your fever by a couple degrees
without realizing
you would feel better if I just
thanked you for taking care of me when I’m sick, too.

It is the morning after the morning after
and he has left cinnamon sticks beneath my pillows, I
inhale and exhale when I sleep
until all their dust has been swallowed –

dissolving into me
like water from wet linens onto skin, to be a naked
root love has taken everything from.