in this new apartment that i have swept clean
i sit and wait for your arrival

i have my agitprop tucked under a mattress
like a teenage boy with his magazines,
i have taken the posters off my walls, turned
books backwards so their edges stick out
the yellowing pages like gaps in your teeth, hollow spaces
filled with the symphonic horror of my philosophy/photography/poetry collections;
triumphant: i have orchestrated a composition you will never comprehend.

you will inspect the blank, pockmarked walls,
ask semi-casually after a boyfriend, but i’ve bought traps to keep the pests out.
for all this distance between us,  
i’m still terrified i’ll end up with the phantom imprint of you
stuck to my walls like tacky, greying tape, the corners of thin paper
clinging to my fixtures, fixations, finishes, fetishes,
haunting consecrated grounds.

in this new apartment,
i sit and wait for your realisation that the bathroom door
opens on the wrong hinge
it breaks - and lets out a guttural howl
you stir inside me somewhere

all fathers want to be their eldest daughters.

your face sits in the curve
of my neck,
butterfly tendrils of sleep
clutching our figures
when you whisper
you have dancers feet, and
kiss my jawline
wrapping arm around leg and
pressing us together,
feet now arched only in passion, not poise

my dance teacher turns over in her grave.

sometimes when i visit nothing
i bring a sticky note
it just says i miss you
this dimension is otherwise empty

this is where things go
to get lost:
and they succeed often

i leave quickly and
remember to wave to the
nervous stranger who enters
holding too
a sticky note in his
trembling fingers, veins beating
like tiny butterfly wings beneath
paper skin

i make sure to close the
door behind me.

is your boyfriend a witch?
he seems nice, rather nice, the way
all strange young men are,
i spoke to him once- he left me
puzzled and poised, i spent the rest of
the day pondering impossibilities
so then tell me

is your boyfriend a witch? is he.
is he? it is fine if he is, but you must
tell me, because if he is
maybe then we would have
cold sharp metallic nature brushing our
house, maybe then we will see the
lights flicker on in an excuse for the
inexplicable, maybe then there would be some-
thing else in our lives besides the dull
and drudgery,

is your boyfriend a witch? if he is
i will open the garden
make sure there are mushrooms- is he friends
with the fair folk or does he make
the enemy out of them-
if he is a witch i will make special
cakes for halloween i imagine witches must
love halloween, for what a great time to be
as witchy as as possible, do witches
care if you find out they are witches-
most times

i think your boyfriend is a witch, i’ve watched
him slip from between walls and
from the ceiling to visit you, sometimes
when i see him leave he doesn't really
leave you, he seems at odds with the
neighbour’s cats-
and spirits;
is your boyfriend a witch?

for if he isn't,
i just don't know what
i’ll do
with all this lovely
witch’s brew

lover is the word used
for boys at midnights, for boys
who tumble into hushed bedrooms together with
moonlight/ lamplight, for boys who
whisper empty beautiful lies into the night,
playfully stroking hope and teenage-angst *******
into long hair, for the boys who
disappear under covers and into
dewy mornings before the post-
man arrives.

it is not a word for girls, not the
sweaty ones pushed up against
cool glass car windows, leaving their imprints,
handprints from sitting in the lot too long, not for girls
with legs tangled, breaths mingling, not for the girls
who sipped strawberry soda out of twirled glass straws
on that one autumn day, not for girls
who braid only flowers into another's hair,
not for girls who promise to return, not for the two
girls, voices low, giggling through soft-mouthed kisses,
not for girls who thought being a teenager was the
easiest thing if it meant this, always.

it is especially not a word
for girls who disappeared into the night
and beyond a street corner, who leave
behind shadows of lipstick and traces of oscar wilde quotes,
along with a note that they’ve finally
left for ‘summer church camp’.

come, come get your
daily dose: only twenty
sweet, sweet dollars and a
lifetime of guilt, no
more, no less

we buy it from your
shops, they promise us
more than they have to offer, but
we don't ask for refunds- go back only
to gobble, to pluck and to feast on
the words they told us,
too empty-

empty? you? but you have
so much, too much,
drop after drop we spooned
it down your throat to
wake you in the
freezing mornings: your nose is
red, but only as is the homeless
man’s blood on your
doorstep-

but if he wakes from the ashes
into pain to
offer it to you: pulling open his
trench-coat jacket, shady
side salesman/conman, remember
to shove it away, how do you dare
take from men that aren’t
yours- you must help him, just
today, just today, because maybe
tomorrow you can stop

stop, stop along
the street corner, sidestep
fallen bodies- there is the fallen yellow flyer,
come join us, join
the bleeding hearts club

people say
red
is the color of love.
it is
the dusty shade of roses,
the hue of lips painted,
the shimmer of her dress
when you dance.

but really,
red screams of
loneliness.
it is
the shade of poppies in an empty field,
the hue you see when she leaves you,
the shimmer of book covers
in an empty library.

orange,
is a better color.
it is
the shade of muted sunsets,
the hue of vibrant music,
the shimmer of a light burning
on a dark evening.

orange
makes up the embers of love,
burning bright and strong and fast
until it is
gone.

orange
is the color of love.