shellback song

litany against falling in love with your best friend

silence of the predawn. thrum & cackle of the air.

the dark makes your ceiling fizz with coloured seurat spots.  

shoulders rise & fall. crashcrashcrash goes my heart. it makes me wince, like how you talk too loud in cinemas.

i cannot move, in case i disrupt the pompeiian stillness. something huge & red & raucous—hunting, devouring, all-consuming. perhaps i will never move again—time is strange here, all tight and tangled up, chewing gum stretch.

the room seems to rock slow, like a moored boat—pulling & catching, always returning.

in your sleep, you turn away from me. the bed is small, & you take most of the covers with you, leaving my shoulders bare. i don't mind.

the stick is still on my fingers from the nectarines after dinner.  you picked at the stone until it was completely clean, yellow flesh caught in between your

yell of foxes in the night.

cold cuts clean through me, cleaving pale fat apart from bloody meat. strands of your hair tickle my arms.

i do not intend for this to change.

i have calculated the pain i can handle. i am building up my tolerance. my new heart, clamouring, throwing itself against its walls. negligent parent. 

i will not console her. she will learn.

if i loosed the bow line i wonder if i'd drift. in my mind, we've been like this forever. pull & catch. curled up like roots, swelling, breathing together, for & for each other in this mess of earth. 

fetal phantoms spin & break against the hull. you are so young, they say. let it flow through you.

but i am steadying now. pull & catch. i can match your stillness. 

take a stretch, lean back into it. oh, my gasping throat. oh, my little bones. i will practise. they tell me it will dull in time.

been listening to visions of johanna & reading too much frank o’hara…..anyway lol!! michael rosen was so real when he said we can’t go over it we can't go under it we have to go through it……..