Drunk, we walked west to the ocean,
drop soup and sake,
sloshing in our guts.

You would marry in twenty days.
I stayed close,
swallowing the words
that would’ve ruined it all.

In seven years,
I will have a son.
You will bury yours.
We will wonder - quietly -
if souls can be traded,
if grief moves
like a current
between blood that is not blood.

The tide was electric,
a woman waded in,
cupped bioluminescence
like an ember from the deep.

We stood apart from the others,
two men
bone-wet and wind-bit,
trying to scratch our names
into blue light,
signatures gone
before the next wave came.

I never told you the future.
I let the dark reclaim our feet.
You laughed,
drunk and perfect,
and I looked away
as the sea
turned the sand
back to stone.

you lifted me in a dream,
like it was nothing—
like the years hadn’t passed
like storms
through our bodies.

we spun until dizzy,
grinning like we used to:
in a world filled
with lollipops,
doorway dates,
and curfews.

you never kissed me
the way stories end.
you only loved me
in the narrow space
between your name
and your friend’s.

you told me
i should be with someone good,
someone who could hold
all my stories.
but never said,
someone like you.

you held my heart
when it spilled,
drunk, full of ache,
and my hand on a bench
before life swelled
and whisked us away.

no fallout.
no fight.
just the silence.

Twenty three years of age
She works, and she plays
Oh, she plays!
Controller in hand
The Sims is the plan -
A boring play-style, really,
Fulfilling her what if's
Of marital bliss

                                  What a twist

Cascades of pixelated children
"I think I'll name her.....
Quellcrist!"

we were friends once,
until you shut me out,
angry that your lover —
the married one —
tried to take me
when he wasn’t allowed.

the blame poured on me.

but i begged you back,
forgiving him, and you.
call me naïve,
but i forgave myself, too —
though there wasn’t much to.

i still thank heaven
you left me sore and reeling
before my wedding.

i’d have hated for you
to show up, smiling,
immortalised in photos,
as a maid of pretending.