Shells 2

Your breath goes steady into the dark, warm, setting the pace for your sleep.

Here lies me, amid another breed of darkness;

dark as ever, blinding as always, but without rhythm.

In the quiet we listen hard. Pressing one ear, covering the other,

we listen to one another’s shells;

I strain to hear the shapes that the air around your breath makes,

all the colours of the dark emerging like a bleeding watercolour.

Meanwhile you’ll be folding the blank space into shapes that could be my shadow,

and here is where we tessellate, trying to forget the space.

Vanishing Point

I’ll watch you until you reach the vanishing point,

Waving all the while, just in case –

I’ll keep one ear to the ground,

feeling your footsteps fluttering far away

in the hope that –

As you drive across the bridge, I’ll climb the wall

to see you rise and comfortably fall;

I’ll keep two fingers on your wrist

for every time I almost missed you

until we’re doing wonky high tens, if we have to.

And if you ever do the opposite of staying here,

if you find yourself in the unsafe place,

I’m never going to let you disappear.

The only language

is the silence in the noise and the roar and the scream;

the calm in the thunder, in the storm of the train.

Walking and Waving

With a pocketful of crumbs I set off.

Keeping my head down

and focusing on the ground that moves towards me

I walk away with one long wave that paints the air.

My hair trails behind me like a sail,

my coat follows my feet like a tail,

and the fate of my map is left to a pile of embers

in a place I know I may never find again.