And so,
as if the final
of the feline high jump,

our neighbour’s pet, piebald,
getting on in years,
sits on her side,

surveys its challenge.
Then, as if the crumpling
of ink-splodged paper,

she crouches, half
Fosbury-flops herself
up to the post, plops down

into our garden,
merrily saunters
across the rain-tickled grass.

As you launch
the mottled sphere
(no longer luminous yellow

after many a capture)
with a flick of the wrist,
all the neighbours would see

is a streak of black,
a charcoal bullet
between the trees

as your friend on four legs
fizzes after its prize,
jams it in the mouth,

lollops back to you with rapid pants,
clump of slobber, a monosyllabic
can I do it again.

we eat strawberries at the table
in our underwear and the television
tells us we’re at war again, by which
I mean not specifically us, but you
know what I mean. I have left last
night’s still half-full glasses by the sink
because we might go back to them
and the drink itself was expensive
enough. As you pick another ruby
***** from the bowl I think
I get it now, how not to be
jealous of others, of their closed doors
intimacy. It’s different when you’re in it,
head-first, sugar-rushed, red-mouthed.
There is rain forecast for today;
already pewter clouds are behind
the windows which means any plans
we might have made are almost certainly
scuppered, but at least the two
of us are together, for now if not forever,
I suppose you can never really tell.

I must be in one
of those funny moods again
(if funny’s even the right word)
          the images easy enough to pick from
          whether rinsed grey
          or blooming maroon
the sky somebody else took
midnight blue
with stardust pentameter
          I’m thinking of cold water
          you don’t mind bathing in
          somewhere in Scandinavia
a voice, yours or the last album
we listened to drifting to us
as we break the lake’s membrane
          and if not that (you’ll see)
          my indecision hasn’t wavered)
          a dress, a road,
a photographer whose name matters little
in a silent stretch of land
I’m half-dreaming of
          and I wish this isn’t some
          toxic desperation with its ginger sting
          galloping to the fore
but the words already here
collapse like trains of dominoes
in my head you wouldn’t see what I can

This,
the confirmation
of the already known.

The cementing of your love,
your own vivid blizzard
of it,

multi-sided shape
birthed from the collision,
theatre of hearts

that followed.
Now the premiere
of a new novel,

pages snow-white
to be set alight
by your shared language,

chapters written
by no other half,
but your whole.

don’t run into the darkness,
your nightmares will only bleed
through the pages, into the fabric
of your desperately created new self.

ready to retch, they’ll ask, you’ll succumb
to the shot of sugar proffered to you
on a blackened spoon, signature
by the opposite hand, vacant lungs.

I know you’ll query the fingers,
cold, gaunt runes around your neck
but in time you’ll learn to love them,
their unspecific touch, the frosted tips.

with a drip of blue fizz they’ll put you
back where you came, mail you
capsules that vanish in the throat
but taste of your blood, of peppermint.

Perhaps they will forget,
have already forgotten
with their yellow jackets
and marker-stained fingers, ready-set
for another unfamiliar face
with their first aid kit,
strings of terminology to engage the meek
and mute, the absent without leave.

They have left me
a failed apprentice with stationery
in my pocket and an out-of-tune song.
You might well ask
where I flicker next. My polka-dotted mouth
says nothing, the answer deep
in the hole they dug, or wedged on the roof,
the last unobtainable golden jigsaw piece.