Monday 10 December 2012

And Now That It's Cold

Street lamps don’t turn off without me seeing you
in a dream
that by morning blows fuses in my chest.

I am faulty without you.

This is what it is to have my heart
standing in the shower at 6am
wearing a T-Shirt you slept in,
I am not clean 
because I can still smell our summer
because it is December
and this morning I’m not your coffee
                            I’m not your coffee.
I am alone
in the kitchen staring at the fridge -
how cold
the distance between us?

I don’t know why it matters
now that I’m barefoot in the bedroom
and suddenly warm
in the thermal
of that day in Bristol,
when I fell down the stairs
in a sleeping bag
and you laughed
but only after you knew I was ok.

If I dress in all-black, like a Chilean poet
you will miss me tonight and
I will write the saddest lines.

But now I’m pulling out 
all my clothes from this closet
finding nothing you haven’t seen me in,
today is the same
and the barriers at New Cross Gate
tell me again,
I am not Pablo Neruda
I am on Platform 1
It’s 7.32am
and the train I want is somewhere else
            with other passengers
and that has to be ok.

I’m not living with a shadow
that might push me on a train track,
I am learning to fall down my own steps
to get up alone in the dark,
laughing at my own jokes 
                  but only after I know I’m ok.

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