Of Nights

You are lonesome and frustrated in
a shelter, bus long overdue,
with a woman standing beside you.
It starts as nothing, but when the sobs begin
they are barren and bereft, and you're still waiting
anxious and still when the bus blinks
into view and for a second you think
she'll force herself into the grating.

She doesn't. Sorry, she says. She sits
cautiously, as if the seat would bite.
You try to look out but it's too bright
inside, like there's nothing left in
the world but that sky, these cheap seats,
her overcome, devastated skin.

He's telling me about a superhero in DC where it's like magic instead of science and she makes things happen by saying them backwards.

You can't feel your toenails growing.

In a moment like a peach but where you eat the stone and it is dates and bread and solid and nourishing and a glass of water is coming soon, in those moments we like so much where you're happy and not ashamed, sometimes when you let the water hold you, floating, you are eating the peach as it falls from the tree to the ground, you can feel how good the moment is to be, different from <end>, that time subsides and all there is are fingers. And peach juice. But no stomachs, and shouting doesn't feel loud.

[I just want to say that I am spurting out love that is just for you, and my blood bubbles are angry that I'm telling them that they have to go through my mouth in order to speak to yours]

Sentencing
​
I don’t like to think about endings.
I don’t like the idea that they’re watching
From the top of the stairs,
From the deep end of the pool,
From the scuttling corners of life
 I don’t like to think about endings.
I don’t like to think of them because
They don’t smile properly
They avoid eye contact
And they don’t play fair:
Like when they try to take before
I can say goodbye properly
I don’t like to think about endings.
I don’t like to meet them unexpectedly
When I’m not composed and ready
Sneaking under my subconscious
And waiting to pounce on my everyday
With blank walls and full stops
And hospital diagnoses
So I don’t like to think about endings.
I don’t like the way they move
Their slow sideways gait
Like silent crabs, heavy
With weightlessness and
Sorrow. They climb all over my dreams
As if my sleep were full of handholds
I don’t like to think about them
The endings, I mean
Their shape, their breath
The print of their touch on my clothes
Their smell in my deodorant bottle
I don’t want to think about it
They move the signposts
So I can’t drive properly
So I can’t walk to the shops right
And I trip up on the pavement          
I don’t like it
 Their stops, their drops, their
Sense that the present will become past and
Nothing will be the same again
I don’t want it
I don’t like them
The endings
The letter in her hand
The sentence passed
I don’t want to
Don’t think of it
The endings
Please God, let it be quick.