London, 1972.
Here are the things he did not ask for that you had provided: a colic devised of empty hands, teenage years wasted in the empty cinema, your focus in the dark. Here is your hand on his waist as he picks a grape from your grandmother’s fruitbowl, here is his falter at the touch, here is the cold collapse of your cells as you slip, dreamlike, over the edge. Here is the tapestry owl that blindly took it all in.
Here is the close-up of your name coming from his mouth, the pink mollusc of his tongue, the wet fruit of the sinking vowels a knell. Here is where you die. This is where you like to crawl into in the winter, the last time you bled out over someone, the last time language meant a thing, your name threaded through his teeth, delicate bones. Here is the weak sun of an autumn midday, it smells of peaches softly. Here is the close-quarters document of what you do not document. Here is a reservoir. Here is a new reservoir filled by an unknown ocean.
Here is the equation with the working shown. Here is the rain on the tin roof, a clock that won’t seem to stop, a churlish pang pang pang by her sleeping ear.
