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An unexpected connection
And you are caught

His captivating smile
And you are trapped

You may have thought
Your delight spent

You may have wrapped
Away sentiment

You’re his awhile
All his, his perfection

You count to one hundred again
The seconds, the minutes raise
This is the longest trip

Caused by you; time paused
A raw feeling of fear inside
This is the longest trip

I am terrified, potentially cracked
Scared; forward or back
This is the longest trip

All of the words repeat themselves
Snatched catches of conversation
Across a room filled with people
We speak with our eyes and our dreams
Caught by a vision beyond our time
A connection that empties rooms
For us, plays out a past that doesn’t exist
The day looms large and makes reality
Of the things that should be
Instead of the dreams, here we are
All that is, it is normality
Talks you out of the dreaming
Makes what we could be into something, then nothing
Lapsed time and lost memory
Of the things that never happened.
We should close our eyes and pass
Ourselves off as lovers or sweethearts
Nothing that we could want
Would catch us out here
A temporal, temperate illusion
Caught between daylight and waking
A place where I feel safe

An extended evening
we sit at a table
share experiences
speak to each other

we share one language
not romantic French
not the logic of German
nor the beauty of Spanish

we are surprised to discover
that we can converse
reality strikes
we reduce ourselves

to a single language
that we all speak
a table full of creativity
five languages,
but one conversation

You are under the same sky
A rising sun bleeds out night
Clouds pitch, yaw, something awry
You are thoughtless, without sight
Locked in a dreamless waking
Gulls screech, dried-out grasses sing
You are with him

In a distance, in a gap
By the side of the boat yard
You sense the absence, the trap
You cover your eyes, turn hard
Pull away from the moment
All your words, unsaid, now spent
You are with him

A new desire
Begins to emerge
As the snow falls
You are exhausted

The pretty girls
Play with irony
As the sun shines
You are weakened

Your words remain
Bound – they’re unsaid
As the snow falls
You are covered

The others are
Skittering across
As the sun shines
You’re unsteady

Alabaster
Ancient artefact
As the snow falls
You are hostile

I have caught you
I anchor you down
My hand on your ankle
I hold you

I have not lost
But what I never had
Has become dust in
My cold hand

The moment I faltered
Thought too much
Changed our electricity
To dullness

The bright light of a knife
Against white skin
And a bleed of lust
To nothing

I am dreaming
I hold onto you
You are my passion
I see green

Fashion out failure
From gemstones and buttons
Coca-cola bottle tops
Things I found

And then, now, all is lost
Heat, dehydration
Makes our flirtation
Stop

The pinch of winter on the breeze
The fox as it trots across our road
You stand at our gate
Your eyes hollow; you wait
I will not be there

By the door, your raw fingers
Whitened by cold light
The last shaft of sun
The latch on the gate, still undone
I am not there

You asked, last to leave,
How I fared, stared past strangers
Paused, took in everything
Heard, in darkening light, the birds sing
I was not there

There is a thread
that connects

us. You’re three feet
from me, there

on a dance floor
perfectly

still. I feel the
beat of your

heart and hear it,
nothing else

matters, your breath
touches me

I burn with the
fever with-

in, unrest, heat,
contagion.

He kisses away the saltwater of her tears
Tells her that he will return
We make a liar out of him
Send him out to the mud, the dirt and the blood
That is war, we don’t bring him back
A grave somewhere, some part of England
Some noble force fought for, now forgotten
She holds onto the memory of him
Feels the touch of his lips on her skin
She remembers him