I.

My fingertips bear the scars of love,
of flesh broken, torn apart.
Your thumb, cold against my wrist
when you pierced this skin
with a worn pocket knife.
The chasing warmth of our fingers
pressed together, a smear of blood
that gave us our secrets.
How you kept those secrets going
in the rinse of the ocean
as it pulled me into its grasp
leaving me breathless, shapeless.

II.

We met at the quoins, old brick
remnants of a grey, faceless city.
In a dream, I was born here,
but in the thirst of waking,
I am left with dry ache
of dust, a crack in a wall
where any of us could have emerged.
Now this is the place where we buy our needles
in exchange for ourselves.
An antiseptic place,
but we are dirty vessels in a dirty sea
and we have nothing to offer.
You leave early.
I sign my name.

I am told it is at least three days wait
for a clean bed.
I wait two days.

In a dream, I spend the three days
writing letters home to you.
You take them from the letterbox,
open then, seal them again with wax
inside the envelope of your chest
which you have broken open with an axe
from our mother’s bedroom.

III.

My blood will be a cool rust,
bitter spray, crisp water,
a red shadow you kiss
and dress for the symphony.

When I found you dead,
I pulled you from the ocean
and kissed the verdigris
out of your eyes
which had always been blue.

IV.

I sign my name to the list in the clinic.

I am told it is at least four days wait
for a clean bed.

In a dream, I watch,
unable to speak,
as you take the axe from off the wall
and crash it into your chest.
I want to wish you well,
offer you care,
but my voice here
is a reflection of itself
lost in the vacuum of this space
between us.

It is the same and only dream since
and it is always at this point
where I wake, sweating and afraid
for how many days it has been.

Previously published in the chapbook American Drug Poems