Ice cream on a sunny day

The morning I opened my face onto the draw of your existence, I knew I was hooked. I woke up in your bed the wrong way round, spoons in a draw nestled head to head, the big one clinging to the little one like a pigeon hugging a safety raft in a storm. A tiny bird and the queen of carrot flowers, the one  curled into the softness of the other and together scooped up into a delicious, forbidden ice cream, strawberry and mint chocolate chip together. Your scent is oddly soft and clean, a light dusty pink smell. I don't dare to kiss you, but I gather up a purple scarf and coat nestled at the end of your bed, waiting patiently to be worn home. At my door, the key won't turn in the lock. It's so bright, this weather, this sun, kissing my neck and sucking drops of sweat from pink ears. I feel a little blinded by it, the unthinking glass keeping me always in the light, showing me the reflection of  a face which is telling me that this is what you are and this is what I am and the weather this weather, this sun is so blinding, and I am far far too English for any of this sun or this happiness, or this downright American Miranda July style of storytelling which you love so much and which I cannot stand because I know that it is the only way I know how to write, and I am so like you. If I squint my eyes to the left and strain over the mess of footballers in the field, I can imagine that I see your place and you still sleeping, hunched and feline in that tiny bed, your long toes peeping from the cover, each one painted a different colour. 

The summer I spent under your star

 Icy water burns

The fleshy space between my toes

I gaze at your face

Up, and beneath a wooded smile

I bathe my body in the ebb and flow of sun

Your son, taller and younger

Than both of us

We love him            

And mysteriously

He loves me

He is a child of the water, running naked into pools and

Climbing over green carpets that

Throw the rest of us unwilling into tadpoles and rock

To you, his devotion, unwaning

Strains under a love

That crumbled the day you lost your hair

He cannot look at you

And I instead gaze through your eyes and see some

Pure crystal of a thing which is

The hardened jelly of your being

Your spirit

And I love you for it

I understand you, and I fear that I will become you

The day you stopped thinking

He phoned me and said

'I think you should know that my mother

I know, I croaked,

I

No pain, I

Really valued the time I spent with her

I don't know what you did

But she wanted to thank

I regret your loss, I immediately regret

Those clumsy sounds, thick and heavy

The dry click of the phone

A black expanse of his silence

The burning of a star now gone,

I still see it through clouds

A faint orb, the

Huge round moon of my selfish head

My tears

Which were not meant for her

Were not mine to cry

I am a surplus vessel for his sorrow

And a vessel for the blood which, from woman

Flows to woman

My blood spotted on cotton

The only summer I spent with you.

Diving

You asked me what the meaning of life was

Whales? I said, with a question mark larger than my nose

You tried again, 'do you love me?'

I wondered if it was really a question

Or a thought that struck us both

The day I saw you, golden and blue

Swimming lengths of that tiny backyard pool

The most beautiful boy

A little older than me, mysterious, exotic

I followed you all day

I learned to dive, and the sun burned

My pale virgin skin

Which you took in your hand

My hand

The whole of my body in that one grasp

Blistering under your touch

I couldn't speak to you

It was too bright, too clear, too painfully explicit

To say more than 'uno', 'this is the english way of saying trashcan',

What's a quarterback?

When I left you, I felt that I was drowning

Fifteen lengths of a smaller pool, underwater

Four years passed, or maybe three

Dreaming of you, waiting for your letters to form on the screen

Let's go to Paris, you said, together

I'll open a bookshop

Or maybe London

The thing is, I read what I want to

Into those messages you sent to a little girl you found

Sweetly waiting

Those books, without the scribbled-upon notes you lacked so badly

To get more than the car you bought with the money for college

To drive to california to see the girl

Whose love you wanted so badly

I gave you mine. Please,

Come back.

The day she told me.

The cold white shock of your bones lying in the soft ground.

I did not cry. The sun no longer burned, eclipsed by the

Earthy shadow cast as you dive headfirst

Into the mud, shimmer and vanish

I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you

I will always love you, please. Please. Please. Please. Please.

Listen to me.

I stopped sleeping with the light on.

Your ghost, at least, knew

That my heart was gone

An empty crisp-packet of a shell

(Crisps are chips, but really chips are fries, do you remember?)

Sleeping alone in the dark

Thinking of you

Not crying, and soon

Unable to speak.

The tunnel

In the tunnel,

are you still waiting for me there

Grandfather?

I cannot escape when

Half-walked beneath

the water wins

my wings are not made for water

you know it,

you couldn't have held it off for me?

you, behind the grey-green waterfall

'you or someone else sweetheart' you say

it's true

'it would have happened'

I missed you, and I've been waiting

who spoke? you or I

Poem 6

Run fast, and tripping through sweet sludge

Digging a deep sandy hole to cower in

Burying  feathers, plucking my chicken-body naked

Ignoring the hatchett, whole and gleaming in the moonlight

I cannot force it down, no matter how the gulps push

Contraction rips it open, pouring out that red 

dark liquid it needs drinking dear and 

May as well while 

Attending to nothing

Waiting for it to hit

Steam, roll and burn

Parisian Cat Haiku

Tortoiseshell squeeze in
Little cat don't jump unless
It is true you fly

The Sea

The deep green sea waves to us as we pull up

Get out of the car and overlook it

Helllooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

We call!

Hellooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Mr Sea! We came out here to see what we could see and we see you! Can you see us?

He doesn't speak back but I know from his crash and bang that he's looking up

You always say that I'm still a child

You're the one talking to the sea! I say

I know that I'm the only one telepathising to the sea

Apart from that little girl next to us

I smile at her in a motherly way

She looks scared. I smile again. She wavers.

I sigh, looking down over the cliffs,

No. I am not going to jump.

Even did I, odds are pretty even that I'd end up on the back of an elephant

Standing on a tortoise, standing on a porpoise, standing on the ocean

Standing in the sea.

I don't feel much like standing in the sea today, I tell you.

I want to dive in, for the first time, and have the salt sting our eyes.

You look acrossly to me, and I, knowing that you'll say something rude,

act the fool.

There's a bucket, and a big blazing blue spade.

I dig a hole in the sand for you, drop you in and watch, like Alice,

as you whirl into a tiny point on my horizon

A ship comes in, breaks the line and you're gone.

I sigh, not for the second time.

You're nothing but a drop in my ocean.

You tap me on the shoulder with your spade.

My castle is ready, I lift off the lid, I am, if a little sticky, pretty smooth.

Bonting, the special round smooth stone for whom I knitted that little jumper

Crawls out of his nest and crowns me.

Together, we will rule this rockpool.