Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
when first we practise to deceive!

you grabbed my hand once,
in the middle of the night and you
held it tight and I don’t know if you
were asleep or not but I wondered what
you were dreaming about, because
I was dreaming about the wrong things.
we lay in bed for far too long, that morning, talking about
egg-and-spoon races and falling off railings
and gigs we had been to, and places that we missed.
your body is the place that I miss, along with California
and the tree-house I made when I was eight.
you are the desert;
I will explore you.
you belong to me and Pythagoras.
in your jaw I find new thoughts and theorems
that I didn’t used to know.
we are arrogant in our discoveries;
we pretend no one else has seen them before.
and now I know all your scars, but I still know my own better.
and I think that maybe I would be better with
my depths unplumbed,
that unexplored lands are still exciting, that one
can be grateful for lots of different things, and I am
grateful for you loving me. I thought to myself at the time
that you smelled Herculean but
I don’t afford you the hero-worship you deserve.
they said I was older now, and it’s true, I grew up under you,
but I didn’t learn love from you.

you noticed that my walls were four different colours.
it was so banal, so deliciously true, all those phrases that
we spoke to each other; you tasted of gin&tonics on the
cricket-ground of a piercingly yellow easter sunday.
lots of lemon, no ice.
we sat there on a white-painted pavilion,
laughing at the way daisies grew in patterns already found by Picasso.
I likened you to some actor or someone, and you kissed me on the
forehead and changed the subject, swinging your legs and looking
out at the players. something happened, and I let the cricket claps
roll towards me and away from me, and waited patiently for you to
explain. you smiled at me, an inscrutable, teddy bear smile and
I held the thought to myself that maybe you didn’t smile at
anyone else like that.
I’m learning you, slowly, just like I learnt
numbers and bat and ball games. we still have time to do
everything. don’t you feel infinite? and for that reason
there is no need to let go of my hand, or to get up anytime
soon. this is me, I’m relinquishing my childhood and I vow
that I don’t want it back. they can keep it, stuffed in square
photographs and marble-covered albums.
now I have let it go in return for you,
you who make my tongue sting and my fingers shake
and my body porous. I am permeable for you. you have opened up
rock pools in me, saltwater reservoirs that trough and crest
according to the romance of the tides,
we’re experiments for ourselves, that’s all we are. let’s go
travelling, let’s go exploring. I will tread carefully on the highways
and maps of your torso, if you lift me up and carry me.
come into my hinterland. voyage to me and over me, sail my seas,
hoist the flag, land ahead. actually I don’t know what lies ahead
because I’m not very good at reading compasses but I’m a deft hand with
the stars, and they told me that there’s a man overboard. I knew from
the constellation of the skull and cross bones.

there is time in between the times we see each other
to forget what true affection feels like, and then to recall it in
the impulsive grip of a hand at the most inopportune moments. and
you kiss me on the nose, and I think, ‘oh, now I remember’.
I wish I could know what you are thinking when it is silent for
a whole, folded hour in my folded, white sheets in my bed
and we’re listening to the wind chimes and the barks of the dog
and the dustbin men are making the rounds, emptying and carrying
on, lifting and driving and moving on, and you
finger my restless limbs because you know I’m craving movement
and tame my tapping fingers and smooth my hair back ‘til I am still again.
and I always wonder: do the dustbin men imagine the lives
inside the houses whose rotting produce they midwife away?

do they suspect, ever, or even think, that a few metres up there are
people lying in each others arms?
when I am on the street,
or travelling, I match a life to the faces that I see, I imagine and create,
and I try and guess whose arms they have known, whose lips
they have longed after, or how many times they have really, truly cried
so the bowers of their rib cage feel like they are splintering apart.
and who it was they cried for.
sometimes I’ll wonder if they ever won egg-and-spoon races
as a child, or ever played cricket particularly well.
I’ll pretend that I’ve seen them play,
that they were one of the beleaguered fathers
who played on a sunday at the village hall and
pretended not to mind being watched by strangers like us.
maybe I picked a ball up for them, once, or
poured out a pitcher of Pimms at the refreshments stand for them afterwards.
maybe I’ve met a million people who will never ask me for more than
just to check my ticket, or the way to the Portrait Gallery.
I’m glad that I’ve asked you for more than that,
I’m glad that we meet some people who take the time to try and discover us,
that we all spend some portions of our lifetimes living in the vocative.
I’m not good enough for you, yet, but I will be. I won’t
let you drown on the journey through me. it could take me days to reach you, but I’ll set off now.