Bobs and Bits I've Written

And we can leave

The balcony door

Wide open

For the honeyed light

And hum of bees

And the company of our garden.

The glossy green leaves,

The purple velvet of petals,

Lean intimately in,

Like they are old friends,

Like they have known us from infancy,

like ice in the swelter, balm on burns.

It’s relief and torment and tension and unclenching and all 

I can think of is exposing my bare chest, sternum peeled back,

Early in the morning, under

her breath,

over the coffee

and it hangs there momentarily

occupying the same space as dust motes,

sunlight, quietness and warmth,

In scented water.

Silken liquid inches across her flesh

Lavender, rose, honey cascades in rivers from her hair.

She traces her her hands along her jaw, smooths them down her neck,

pushing diminutive streams past the crest of her collarbone until they burst banks and flow freely along the slopes of her breasts.

She savours steam-filled inhalations - the expansive sweetness catching in her throat 

as though it savours her, too.

Beneath the surface of the water, all alien sounds are dispelled; she flirts with the hush of her breath, becomes smitten with the chime of her fingers’ swirl.

The worn path of the carpet is freckled; like your back, my nose.

A constellation created by the stagger and stumble of that period in the day

when the sun is rising still in the sky and its reflection dances off the canal water

making an ocean of our ceiling.

The cup feels level in our hands but the magnetic pull of the bed or sofa

 or each other 

makes us unsteady and every so often the warmth and richness in our hands spills over.

Careful that the composition of my attention does not centre around you

Careful to steal clumsy, blurred snapshots

To painstakingly assemble into well-thumbed albums,

The sensation of your chastising migrates

From the hollow space at the back of my throat,

to the sting of my teeth on the flesh of my cheeks,

to the acidic squeeze of my oesophagus as I swallow your dissension

As your soft derision follows the worn map of my body

I smile and stumble over my words, unsure of my direction, location, destination

Doubling back, seeing the treachery of my path

Stalling

Allowing the others to amble on

Until your smile and words allow me a compass

I did well to keep my pour steady

Despite your drizzle switching to drowning deluge switching to drops

Eventually dry

Your grasp was impulsive, greedy, essential

Tightness loosening until I was disorientated and ungrounded

Nauseous spiralling

Until thunder forcefully separated us

It was like my mouth was leaking

Like my teeth were mesh, my tongue was the bare branch of a winter tree

Trying to catch smoke.

My belly attempted to compensate,

As though clenching my abs, my obliques

Would pull the already escaping words back into my chest.

But they were like dust motes, these words;

Light, unrestricted and unendingly floating around my left ventricle, my aortic valve

Until they escaped

And hung in the air

Between us.

Unctuous

like syrup, honey, Irish cream.

Slow on my thigh, my trapezius, my lower back,

filling my ear, my chest, all the in between spaces.

The imagined anticipations of childhood did not prepare me for

The buzz of your touch, the tight coil of my stomach muscles

As you prepare for bed

The satisfaction of your breath in my hair, the way your voice lulls my joints to liquid,

The warmth of the food you make, the appeal of your bookshelf.

 I anticipated flowers and heart-shaped chocolate

A dizzying swoop in my chest under moonlight

Silk sheets, rose petals,

Candle light dances in heels and lace.

Once

On a train

And I didn’t know if I should, or if I could, look at the platform where you always greeted me

with a tight hug, the smell of your washing powder, your hand sliding up my bare back under my jumper,

Or the opposite platform, where we kept parting.

So I tried to steal glances at both

It seemed recent and distant.

I felt a little queasy.

Your bobbled blue fitted sheets fade

Into the same worn blue of your walls and ceiling

And everything smells faintly of Paco Rubanne (your only aftershave).

Frantically tangled in bed sheets,

We move in a rhythmic ferocity with non of the tenderness commercial adulthood promises.

I felt exacerbated and satisfied, simultaneously young and old,

when I was with you like that.

Eventually,

Still radiating with heat,

We bundle into coats and tumble into the street and you walk me home

(always by 10:30pm).

Now,

5 years past our 5 years and the hot, desperate and relieving collision of you sting,

I smell the almost absence of your aftershave,

And suddenly,

There we are

In your bedroom.

The sweet semi-oblivion of

A soft, muted sunday

Eyes and ears dormant

Our hands and gentle

Heavy cotton

Resting along our lengths

Whispers on shoulderblades

in hairlines, from and on lips

Feeling a dusky pink, warm content,

As shafts of sunlight peer through leaves,