When youth
When wit
When these weapons depart
May courage
May wisdom
May these tools prove enough

If pain was a friend instead of a burden
– if I could make peace with the unwelcome
– if perhaps I could see her as a teacher,

not in a lecture theatre (distant and with sharp echoes),
but in a private tutorial with soft furnishings
and perhaps a vase of flowers.

– If her lessons came with handouts,
exploring, with pictures, the reason for the searing,
the overwhelming

– but no,
my pain is that annoying parent on a pointless trek,
refusing to stay silent,
incessant in her insistence
that we can’t part ways.

I would make the light.

I'd take it
from wherever I found it.

I'd bring it inside
and make it work for me
and so find the hidden
and show the truth

and so lift the shadows
to their rightful place.

Seconds before our first kiss
my clumsy words tore us asunder

and so I turned the rudder
from the sunset
into the full force of rejection.

We said nothing more,
and you did not notice my tears.

Her curiosity slipped in,
in silence, viewing
the clear, clean canal, exploring
the slow passings of time,
the wear and tears of years
of rough passage, ready to excise
any hint of a foreign body.

And his body lay, foetal,
while the nurse stroked his hand
assuring him the end was in sight,
but he kept still, his eyes tight shut
until she re-emerged,
and he could blink back into the light.

When I pray, I say too much
and he forgives so much
as his restoring touch
seeps marrow deep
lifting my sorrow
inviting me to rest a while
on both knees

There's moments
when you're at your most vulnerable,
when you're lost
in a moment of release.

Like when you sneeze

- especially when you let go
three times in quick succession
in a fit of complete defenseless-ness.

If your friend is subject
to a sneeze attack
watch their back

(and that way
you're out of their line of fire).