Poet Deploriate

The woods are glamorous in their white fur coats - the roads are ruffled pale - headlights pry into our truck - we've stopped to gather a wandering dog - they hurry us to pass - this instant - at their rumble the trees draw their collars tighter.

Your dog breaks holes into the white skin of winter - stretched tight over our yard - and we wear scarves made of breath.

In the background the trees are triangles - and they nod as they sway on the porch swing of the breeze.

A car has climbed an embankment - Your dog has climbed a tree - in all everything is on the up and up - shall we go play with stocks?

But now a ghost - the wind - your lips on my neck - whichever whatever - but you but you! you haunt me so gently - and now and now a smile.

We are on the asphalt - it bites our shins - your palms are flat - - the way to think of it is as a fall forward, you say as you demonstrate - and I think of our trip to the countryside - your dog lapping the air through the window - - I need your eyes, you’d said in a surprise driveway of wooden statues - you’d meant for the tyres but not really - and there was a pause where we were suddenly not quite vertical - and I think if we were to find the moment where the fall began that would be it.

Last night your mouth drowned mine and then the rest of me - and I was a boat quietly sunk and watching the waves curl overhead.

The window-striped cat watches: - how did you get so small? he asks and I list the ways that I am crumpled - life as a paper bag he says only he doesn't because he is a cat and because I am not anything, really not even a paper bag - and I sit and he chases a fly into the corner of the kitchen.

It is late on a Saturday - I am in a cafe alone reading poetry about bleak numb despair - things are dark and loud in my head like flies - opposite me is a woman with an enormous black poodle - she leaves soon with her black dog and I with mine.

- The cat, that was sudden you say - but it wasn’t, not for me - the nights here are long and the ones in my mind longer still - so I adopted a symbiotic cat much like your symbiotic dog I suspect - - we keep each other alive on a daily basis, I say - we laugh and a bit more - - it seems funny now almost, I say - yes, you say - and I stop for a traffic light - the windscreen wipers smear the glass.

- Oh, I know you’re crazy you said - - I just wonder if it’s the kind of crazy I can handle - and as I lie with couch-ribbed cheek and fingers tingling with the magic of too-long, too-shallow breathing and teeth chattering after four showers and my messages begging for help unanswered - I realise that no, it’s not - perhaps it’s the kind that no one can or should.

Last night over drinks for a friend I was asked about my pets - - I had a cactus for a while - - a good start you don’t need to walk a cactus - - but I killed it the way I kill my relationships - a mixture of benign neglect and effusive over-tending.

This morning I drank my coffee in my decadent armchair the one in the kitchen you helped me move in all those months ago - later we’d sat elbows grazing - - I’m terrified, you tell me from deep in your car  behind the sunburnt glass - - of all of this - another evening, our steps slow on the rain-oiled roads - - it’s why I haven’t kissed you yet - and how my hand on your back can be a warmth or an affront - and there’s no knowing which - - it’s almost a kiss, you say - and I hate kissing - the way you fill your eyes with films - - twelve a week, you say alone in the daytime the only place it’s safe - and the trust it takes to bring me there - the unpractised weight of your hand on my knee in the dark - and only the dark - - he died you say, when I ask about your brother - - and I’ll never go back home and the note you wrote for me in perfect cursive so slowly the book turned so the follow-through of your wrist wouldn’t smudge - - the answer’s eleven says my barista in jest - I have been skirting my pen around the page for an hour - but it’s not - if only it were.

There is a cafe I go to purely to watch a beautiful man smoke in the rain - the fog of his breath turning circles with the city’s - his jacket giving dark wings to his shoulders - and a goodbye voice that shakes me.

I used to date an epileptic you say, then - date is a strong word - then months later - as I am telling you about the death of an uncle in his armchair with watermelon, the cricket on - I used to date a girl called Cricket, you say - date is a strong word, I say because I know by now that your past is a scribble of thunder and you quote Blake to me - and I wonder what our word is and if there is a word strong enough.

There is just one light on and your dog is heavy in my lap - her nose is damp against mine and I can trace a line between my face and hers and yours - - I am not as broken as I make out you say - but sometimes you need to parade the cracks so that people don’t get so close that you need to run away - and your hand is soft against my hair and we find a distance that is just far enough just close enough that we can keep doing this.

Do you run because you care – or because you don’t? And do you look back because you want me to follow or because you don’t?