Take me where your voice
is diamonds
but not diamonds, not really,
not as hard

but hopefully you know
what I mean,
a place I can smilingly float on
your lyrical clouds,

where I can taste the stardust,
where rain murmurs
on my tongue like a hundred
secrets

and Saturdays could be Sundays
or midnight
is our daybreak, orange crescent
sunlight on your cheeks,

so I can inhale as though
it’s something new,
an invention my body just made
and how delicious

to have your daisy-chain of words
or some other’s words
but from your throat, you know,
to breathe in,

sanctify my lungs, my brain,
I’ll thank you for it,
tell you they remind me of jewels so
I can keep on getting by.

I’ll go AWAY AWAY
           sensation of growing up
AWAY for regeneration        razzle-dazzle new me

            migraine thunderbolt     give way
            AWAY to cold air
                                      gulpfuls under
stars   AWAY   nightfall’s unreachable token

if AWAY means AWAY means new
   faces
   means I’m not the I
I was   cannot be   anymore

   it’s cherry fizz     between synapses
burbling blood      AWAY   with
   my intimate thrill

                got to get AWAY
like properly AWAY
                rid angsty clots
years leak if
                        you let them

AWAY is the way
     must be a planet
           whose only frosted   touch     is     mine

   stagnation is   a no
AWAY to fresh   sensation
like skin     of     a stranger

Maybe next year I'll tell you
I love you, the platonic type,
the words light from my mouth
as though constructed from bubbles
and you could be there, set to let them
pop against your tongue, maybe reciprocate.

The other type, I've heard, resembles falling,
but does that feel like floating, your body
when dancing, suspended in air for
a cluster of seconds before caught
by your sequinned partner, all smiles,
or is it more sinking,

we did this at primary school a few times,
the chilly, barefeet-plastered hall floor,
told to close our eyes and gently melt,
pretending we're chocolate in a microwave,
every boneless portion hopeless, floppy
until our teacher revived us with her sound.

Otherwise, it could be a tumbling of sorts,
a trip-on-the-first-step-smash-every-limb-kind,
skin blotches that gasp in agony with a touch,
your mistake stains in violet tones, or,
if executed with a more Wonka flourish,
just lust in the blood. Perhaps you'd bleed pink.

Like I know the feeling anyway.
If the words in my throat are
painted with truth, I'll say it, mean it
and breathe or let embarrassment
crush me in its reptilian silver claws.
You might even say it back, platonic or not,

even if I don't know you much,
even if my bedtime is your breakfast
and you handle cutlery better
and don't mind my eczema if you ever
see it on a fuzzy screen or body to body.
Even if my lips have never known what to do.

You make me miss something
I never had, every crushing syllable
like a wave from a faraway place,

our footprints the day’s tale,
curling as though ribbons
into a drenched chasm of lost stories.

Just like all things, this must end;
photograph-faded, awkwardly torn,
smudged by a briny thumb

so the memory half-warps
and could we remember it anyway?
Maybe this is supposed

to be, just now, one of us
to explain with crimped fingertips,
the other gone before it began.

I.

blankets of mist douse
the garden with bluish tinge
chilly night again

---

II.

another Christmas
plagued by masks and boosters though
brighter days ahead

---

III.

extraction of gifts
from their jackets of paper
hands at the ready

Paris, it could be, but for all you know,
London. A hotel room, four-poster, the sheets
clotted cream but for a Fool's Gold lining.
The en-suite, your bare feet
chilled.  A shampoo bottle left open, water blobs
that tiptoe across a grubby mirror. Then the blue eyes
discover yourself, wide and quite alive
but the morning has barely grown up. Teeth brushed,
face scrubbed, mobile on. Messages from all corners,
a yellow smile, a midnight memory
like an unearthed polaroid.  A trilogy of knocks.
The man, whose name you’d like to remember
for next time, brings twenty shades of breakfast.
The phone quivers again. A tanned brioche, little
butter rectangles too fiddly to exhume. You spot
a bruise on your arm, a wonky plum beneath
the surface where there wasn’t one before,
yesterday hits you now, strobe lights, a headache
that cracked as glass across your skull. Now this.
Bad breath, black coffee to blister the tongue.
And the message. Somebody wants you,
it seems, but you won’t want them back.

the snow flirts with you better than I can
when we walk back from the bookstore,
where books are discounted for one week only
and we passed recommendations
between the shelves and said
I heard this one’s good.

there’s discarded masks by the subway entrance
like malformed *****, mouthless and obsolete,
a whiff of Korean food that meanders
out from the takeaway
and I offload corny joke after corny joke not even worthy
for the back of a beermat
or graffiti-besieged toilet cubicle but you laugh
anyway out of pity I suspect,

the sack of books (Vonnegut, Glück, Didion) seesawing
by your side, our footprints a transitory
punchline behind us.