On this blank sheet,
torn from my bedside journal,
I could record
the unshared grievances
and missed embraces.
All the adventures unexplored.
And when that page was full
I would fold it –
again and again and again –
until it became a tiny tablet.
Then, as you looked away,
I might drop it
into your water and watch
its words dissolve, disperse,
filling your glass
like a love potion. Or poison.
vii. 2024
a birthday poem for TJS
Moonset, out there.
Already they are on their way.
Maybe women also wheelie back and forth
with bins to empty, and return.
Settled, foetal, you cling to the cardboard hem
of flat-pack dreams:
an unfilled mind riding the Alpha waves.
A slant of light squints through the louvres of your blind –
darkness begins to lift.
There is juddering outside.
You’ve seen that monster – lifting, tipping – eat before,
and turn deaf ears on it.
But all your time-torn wiles to win back sleep
are useless as a punctured tyre.
From under snugly covers, grudgingly
you pull yourself up, strand by strand;
realise that comic handstands are a skill
beyond your years.
iv. 2024
