"How did you get this scar?”

 

From laughing horizontally, the floor took on a Dictaphone characteristic

and I presented it with my mouth, in solvents and kisses.

 

“You were pissed.”

 

I reserve that right for you.

 

                                    *

 

She gave herself Anastasian developments in this story,

she was looking for something, we all were,

 leaning into him, the rain was perfect – a suggestion of sex -

and she asked for a lighter.

 

“The dark matters.” He repeated this –

“The. Dark. Mat-ters.” Lining his lips with the syllables,

he presented himself as opportunity to quench her thirst.

She had considered worse.

 

                                    *

 

These days I feel on a limb, I feel with these limbs – and the limbs

are exhausted.

Pinch your fingers into the shape of a person and let it walk -

the pavement becomes more solid, the movements an extension of a bigger body,

a force too god damn awful, a cerebral tackle we will consider our birthing instinct.

(We will assume this a faecal matter later.)

Have you done this? I considered my limbs as bent fingers,

moving through the city, leaving prints unidentified.

On these days I was old, really old,

extracting teeth old, premature balding, kohl crevices below my eyelids old.

I took this as a direction of missing you. The shape you are yet to take –

I have considered worse, but god, did I get old.

Quickly too. A day will go by and I’ll probably refuse elasticity;

shreds of air thin ginger, my bones moving too bold under my skin,

leaning in for a kiss.

I will get old.

 

                                    *

 

She flicked peanuts into the ashtray as his hands fumbled under the table,

her knee, beyond, the leg of the chair, the movements, polythene.

 

“I have never fucked a Rubix Cube” He reasoned with his tie,

slackened the archetype that invited him into people’s homes,

letting them draw in a draught, ready to buy some polythene.

 

She felt he had exhausted his point.

 

                                    *

 

I kept imagining we had met under different circumstances – my nose wasn’t crooked,

I had longer hair. Maybe I had foreign ancestry.

I thought of all these things, and positioned cameras to hide the witch bone.

I understood this as to be missing you.

 

My skin began to pucker.

I had spent too long in the bath tub, climbing back into the womb with a bar of soap.

 

                                    *

 

She had understood the importance of the dark –

how his body became more bearable, the corner of the room

he had left for her, a deepening bruise on her retina.

 

She heard the flick of his Zippo lighter.

 

The dark mattered.

 

                                    *

 

I had to find you somewhere!

 

Be reasonable - my arms were there, outstretched

in the neon weight of it, the straight line of it,

catching the tiles, flicking the silver on and off,

 

I had to find it somewhere.

 

 

                                    (.........)