Pink has been the colour of the day.
The sky is bleeding pink, like a snarling,
gaping mouth and the only evening stars are teeth
and the moon is the lolling tongue.
Or the clouds are scratches on an arm, a Chinese
burn – hot, hard welts. And the
darker clouds lie in the sky like

her hair strewn across the pillow when
the moonlight falls on it at 1am and you

are the only one awake.

And the sky is the blanket your mother wrapped
you up in when you were young and let you be
sick on it on long car journeys,
and she’d wash it again and again and again.
And it’s just been washed, and there’s a deep,
dark balloon floating in the sky,
like two eyes merged into one when you’re lying
very close to someone and are looking at
them, discovering them all over again.
And the tall, forbidding black trees are the weapon
you used that night, sinful and lovely,
when the blood laughed up into the sky,
and stayed there.