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I am waiting for the wilderness to swallow me.
Mottled swamps lie open and aloof,
Yawning at the sky.

The sun slips slowly into the west.
To my right there are the last bloody streaks of sunset
And to my left, darkness.
The clouds are perturbed, like kicking stones into a muddy brook and I
Wait.

Although I am strong as a badger and fleet as a hare,
Your clever ambush snatched my paws
And after struggling at the trap teeth and unwilling
To chew my limbs I finally lay down to anticipate your succour.
You have stolen me.

I am prone like a specimen, sweated and greased.
You lifted up my chin and pushed your fist into my mouth and opened up my ribs,
Tore through muscle and emptied out my lungs into the barren
Marshes and slipped away, my foot released.

Falling in love is like a death sentence.
Two people sitting in a room, sharing bad news.
Aids, Cancer – some terrible illness;
There’s no hope.

And all the emotions; the initial fear and trepidation,
Days up, days down.
And finally the knowledge
That someday it’s all going to end.

I do not require roses or chocolates for love,
Foolish valentines items-passing objects of affection.
Cats bring small relentless gifts to their masters door.
If you do this, how can we be equals?
I do not want to amass a material tower of affection.

The smallest, thoughful things that you could do for me
will break my heart.
Maybe you will give me your pillow because I like
Two instead of one or maybe you will remember
That I don’t like to get up early and you will gently
Sneak into the bathroom to get dressed instead of waking me.

Understanding that I like my time and space you will feel no
Malice if I do not sit with you at night and instead let me
Run the streets or hide beneath my bedspread
Alone with my computer.

Maybe you will allow me the simple pleasure of self neglect and even
Stand back whilst I push my mind and body to destruction,
Knowing that you cannot save me
And also that I don’t wish your salvation.
You will wordlessly accept the damage done.

Don’t bring me flowers – bring me seeds and remembering how much
Blunt knives annoy me, don’t bring me out do dinner but sharpen my knives
To let me cook for both of us. For once.
I don’t desire the lingerie and fancy bedroom attire,
But know how much I love my breasts cupped between your hands.
Do this and no more for as long as I desire.

In return I will be just as thoughtful, and bring you gifts of
Peace and space and silence. We do not need things.

These thin nights of spring cough into life,
Winter is short and heavy, a glass ball and
I stare into it seeking solace from the
Bland tinge of the first warmth.
These are my seconds of joy, thinking
Of the rain as soft as sable -cold and plentiful in winter.
My one succour you can never steal.
Come now, who are you to penetrate my sadness?

You moved like a slow weight;
A thick slab,
Unsubtle, slate-matt
And obtrusive as a tree on the horizon.

You brought me your sorrows;
Held like heaps of dank sand clodded in your fists.
You emptied them at me and
Fell eagle spread across my floor, begging for my peace.

Every night I tried to slip in an hour of sleep;
You harassed my walls and breathed like
You were breathing in your last-
Your emptiness was a monument.

I held you until you felt as light as petals
And hushed your reckless tongue.
Eventually, you sucked everything I had,
And bloated your belly on my desolation.

I wandered through a warland just to lick
The sweat from your chin.
As expected, there was nothing left of us at the end.
At least you pulled me from that hot cave of innocence

You arrived with your tempered heat and pale eyes,
Word-heavy, from a wilderness I only half know
And spreading a thick rind of clotted cream across my hands,
you bade me be still
And demanded that I cease chewing the skin around my thumbs.

I’ve seen trees with fewer knots than me; you out-wound each one,
And gently eased me back to life by rubbing circles on my palm.
Baby steps, my legs are long but my stride is short and quick and you
Slowed my pace, taught me how to stretch my foot from heel to toe
And gently flex out to the root of my despair.

My arms and legs were battered,sand-scorched desert rocks but you
Slowed the swing from day to night
And stilled the wind that raged past my joints; you were a soft grey sky.

Every night you wrapped my dreams in a slow-note,
Cattle-lowing, as relentless as the endless turning of the sea
So that I would not fear tomorrow.
You retaught me how to breathe because I had almost forgotten but
Now it’s as seamless as the winter cloud.

The shadow of a fog dissolves the
Glass; it nudges up the windowpane-
The finger streaks,
Embossed against the grain and
Starlight can’t flood past the
Smog and smears.
We wait, silent as the grave, a cold breath
Sighed throughout the thick hot room
The duvet slurry spreads the floor,
My toenails twist an empty boring hole between
Your knees.
Wide mouth bells drone on.

The evening is wet and heavy
Like damp sheets on a washing line:-
A thick bearskin sky
Opaque and lovely
Dripping down between the towerblocks,
Bulging out like a lip of cream at
The very edge of the very end of the
Very last day.

The leaves convect along the roads,
Each one finally free to reckless abandon and
A squalid death in the gutters.
Aren’t the lights spectacular?
Each colour – mostly red, sometimes
Amber, sometimes green,
Clear as eyes,
And they watch my contentment.

The river is not ready for the cold still of winter
And gluts on mud and sooty runoff;
She runs a thickened oilslick
Beside the road.
Tonight could last forever,
How soft and unremarkable is the beauty.

A murmur of feathers softened in behind the rock.
You lay like an open mouth; black,white,red,
Soft as a dandelion – perhaps sleeping, perhaps dead.

Your eyebead turns to me and falls back to oblivion.
Alive, but perhaps just tasting the last few drops of survival.
I doubt this is your daily rest, but lacking the courage to finish it,
I let you sleep away.

You gape at me like a basking shark,
A bloated cuckoo chick, all rustic spots and red-beak,
Screeching.

You are a silencer; a jackhammer in my throat,
A clot in my lung; a bone lodged in my gut.
I keep myself as quiet as the fox, she tells me
Her secrets to survival,
And how to keep her tongue behind her lips;
I will have her cunning.

Soon, I will rip you from my belly,
Even with your part-closed eyes and half-grown limbs-
Your teeth will not suck my heat.
For now I lie on my side, sow-like, and contemplate the coming of sharp-sting nights
When I will once again slip like a red ribbon of freedom
And you will hear my screams peel out
Whilst you lie low in your cold burrow.