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.

Your Pictures

We used to hang your pictures here;
thick crayola trails, the paper curling
at the corners where you'd pressed
too hard. The way you drew feet,
countless waxy toes running
up the legs - no care for numbers
or bones: soft pink chainsaws bursting
from the waist, that was how you saw it.

Your pictures still surround the place,
though the drawings are folded, bent
and boxed with the crayons at the back
of the wardrobe. Now I trace the curve
of your bones across the room,
ribbonning smooth, silver and black.
The break in the tibia always too wide
to bear, I count the ribs on my way out,
my fingers too clumsy to colour the gaps

Last Impressions

I already miss this morning's
last embrace. I can't
remember the windscreen peeling
back like that, opened
arms of glass; only
the soft support of falling
through the gently slowing,
canvas afternoon.

From my back I see
a sky of sifting flour,
its rhythm slow as the trail
of your nightdress
brushing the carpet of that
forgotten hotel. At least
my eyes are open, I'd never
find you in the black;

when the ambulance
arrives it's night. Only
the last white shreds
are left, holding me
to the hem of your dress, before
the slick gloved hand
shuts you out forever.

Distractions

Remember when the boys discovered

that tearing off the pockets of cloth

from soft white shirts could briefly serve

to replace the further roaming needs

that stretched and tensed from knuckle to nail

before itching back to the wrist? Like thoughts

or feathers they'd fall and drift slipping

from palm to grit under tugs of laughter

and waving threads sadly reaching

back for the suddenly bare breast.

Stitched in the doorway I notice your white

and slender shirt its smooth cascade

exposed and empty serving as no

distraction leaving you; easy and open.

This Poem Is Not About Caving

There's no point in opening my eyes.

The water, ankle level down here,

laps into my boots making my feet swell.

The walls inch toward my skin,

stone encasing me entirely.

Breath bounces back

off the walls in front.

The slim space far outweighs

any effect of touching;

pressing with absence.

My eyes might

even be open,

I just can't tell.

Empty Pages

Soft and cracked your pages

sprawl with black significant

lines. Intertwining

brown stories of grease,

feathers-maps of clumsy

touches: the time you tried

to put me on your shoulders

even though I was getting

far too big to lift.

"You should play the piano"

you said "with delicate hands

like that."