#spilledwriting

Cepheid

We stand beneath it,

Counting in intervals.

Some of straw colour,

Some of ash, some of gold.

Feel the delay, the pause -

How space opens

Like a diaphragm.

Light always arrives late,

Repeated from memory:

The whirl of a dancer’s steps, unreachable.

Dream-skin, fringed with visions,

Roused with someone else’s eyes.

Lie next to me, even as a trick of the light.

I would make a perfume of your quietness,

Hands water-heavy with cherry, lilac, fuchsia -

But you, the distance, I can never possess,

Your heart of strobing places.

In knowing you, I know how far away I am

From everything else.

I pilot the shape of my body between the

Bright places of your afterimage.

Intervals. Unbridgeable gaps.

Unable to touch.

Still counting.

Saw him for his light, a thousand burning embers.

The bells are ringing,

But not from the church.

It's a funeral procession, 

I knew

I had loved you