Tessellation

You are one of the shiniest,
most excellent people there is -
when together in slow time
my hands, absent with the branches
drawing shapes on the windows,
drum in excited fidgets.
But despite this we will
never eat together,
because I am, at times,
just a little, repulsed by you.

Indulging in a rainy-morning
breakfast, the table-tops
a lattice of cracks
like a supporting language,
I find your face in the wood
of the opposite chair.

I look down, reorder my food -
making sure nothing touches -
and think about you, the curve
of your face, regular looping pen
on the backs of your hands,
how you stand on one leg
and crack your knuckles,
your sleep-breaths
like radio-static:

You are wonderful and brilliant
but I can't digest this thought
of eating with you. Looking down
I've divided my food
into tessellating squares:
a chessboard, awaiting the pieces.

Significance

You killed the author twelve years before;

choked with his own lines,

the first strings, at the start of the book.

Now, somewhere in the turn of a page

I make you out: strung-up flaccid

in those same twists.

Your lungs would have made more

sense: old tubers under the ribs;

the rustle of language:

black in the nook of a tissue –

a referent far too clear. 

Instead, out from your elegant knots 

where the others hang,

a white laundry van

broke your body

in Paris congestion,

and forced you back 

to your own conclusion.