Every time she stood near him, time curved. Space warmed. Air thinned.
“Look, Jane, look! A spot on the sun!”
“Don’t stare at the sun, John.”
“Are we going to be happy, Jane?”
“Wait for me to kiss you.”
Air thinned still further.
Every time she stood near him, time curved. Space warmed. Air thinned.
“Look, Jane, look! A spot on the sun!”
“Don’t stare at the sun, John.”
“Are we going to be happy, Jane?”
“Wait for me to kiss you.”
Air thinned still further.
Blue Monday is not real. Nor is Ruby Tuesday a thing. Wicked Wednesday. Thirsty Thursday. Fright Friday. None of them worth bothering about, Marlon thought. But he lived for the weekend and the time he spent with her. Until she went away. Blue Monday.
You wake. You get up. You hope.
You wake. You hope.
You hope.
Hope.
There’s the picture on the big church ceiling
where the older fellow reaches for the hot young thing.
Got it? Well, forget the picture and focus on the fingers –
after all, it’s the gap that stays in our memory.
So, their fingers don’t touch and the sky shines through –
what does that make you think I wonder?
(Rhetorical question by the way.)
It made me think of our fingers pointing
that imagined day on the soft-sand beach
pointing together
pointing to the sky
scratching a chalk-white cloud line across the chalky blue.
Two heads, two hearts, two hands, one line.
A line from where to somewhere
A line that never ends.
pale moon, stars, chalk clouds
snow on the distant mountains
night waiting, or night, waiting
She gave me a handful of berries. We sat next to each other and ate them in silence. When we finished, our lips were red.
when words take breath
when words
when words
when words take
when words take breath
Close your eyes and the stars spiral to their own music, the sky the softest black. Touch.
In the Gardens the last of the decorations are being taken down. An upside-down Santa’s face leans against a chipped two-dimensional reindeer. A child screams from its fur-filled buggy. Bright yellow men are carrying, just, a slab of decking as wide as it is long. For some reason there are seven men on one side and four on the other. Nobody watching is surprised when their path, from a straight line towards the gate, becomes a graceful, then lurching, arc into an iron-railed corner.
The cold is biting. The wind has teeth.
Deep in throats there is howl.
The crack of a tree that snaps in the closeness.
Snow sharp ice on bare-skin faces.
One more step, one more.
One, one more.
One more.
Please.
One more.
Please.