Midnight Clad
It is late. The night sky is a cool blue, its air carries to us whispers of jazz threading the needle of a secondhand vinyl player. "What do you think happens to us when we die?" I ask the night, or maybe you; a man whom I love, and your blue eyes Crackle with all the majesty of God, or a storm over an ocean, and maybe I am a ship And we are in the eye of a storm looking out at walls of water crashing up and down defying gravity, or God Or destiny or fate because there is an intensity in your face that falls away - "I think the people who love us will miss us," you murmur and jazz carries us back into the night air, and memory.
Refuge
We take refuge from the world in a dive bar made out of the parts of trains that never left stations; you and I are the same - Built out of parts that no one knew how to weld, so we drilled holes in the walls and tried to hold on to the pieces of sanity someone else left us; Tonight, we take refuge in tall glasses of brown poison, and the space in each other's eyes where there is space even though we promise ourselves that we are enough - Maybe we are. Maybe I am. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see you walk barefoot on the hardwood floors of a house we made out of parts of the world left by the train tracks; It doesn't mean I wouldn't want you and I to take refuge from the world in each other, to hold worlds between our interlocked fingers, I want to see you wear an oversized hoody of mine when you wake up hungover from your last shift of a long week, I want to see you wake up when you realise there is already coffee in the air, and you do not have to do everything alone; anymore. I want to see you come home to a platter full of pasta served on plates made of cogs coughed up by belching beasts hunkering for railroads reminiscent of the first time that I met you, When we took refuge in a dive bar, and you looked down into a tall glass of brown poison, and looked up into my eyes; and smiled.
84 Charing Cross
By accident, I lend you a book your mother loved; wrap it in brown paper, and pass it to you beneath a table on a date like we are in school, and the words on the pages are too important to wait for recess; worth the risk of being caught by a teacher, a ruler; worth having my note read aloud in class, or being kept back afterwards because I need you to know that I see you, and I need you to know that now, and not later, so I pass you a note under our desks; brush your leg lightly with my hand, hold you for a moment and I do not know a lifetime ago your mother held this book like I want to hold you; gently, passionately and well, but you tell me afterwards; smiling.
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