never let go

I need to be held at night

when I shiver and shake and I shout in my sleep 

I need to be held

and if you hold me

I will tattoo your name onto my hand

to hold tight to my face through the pillow 

and if you hold me

I promise I will hold you back

and never let go until you tell me 

Castro Marina 200901

I blinked and the firework was a flower on the back of my eye, evening star soaring as the moon sank beyond the town wall. Where the sea had been this morning was deep nothingness, holding glassy afloat the lights of the outgoing boats. A moment, and the moon.

Moon

Ali stretched his hand towards the night sky and pulled down a crescent of milk-white seaglass, polished smooth by decades of waves. ‘Here is all the moon I can reach,’ he said. His lover smiled in silence, her eyes full of starlight. She touched the glass to her lips.

Beach night

The beach stones are thousand-year smooth, grey light grey when the clouds clear the moon, black as the night when the misting returns. The sky-black sea crashes foam white at its border. If there are voices, they are distant, both in place and time.