Having a cigarette at the service station on the albanian border

‘24

Your kindness was difficult to see through, what

tobacco are you smoking now? In another's
embrace? The air so thick with kisses never

could hands let go. Didn’t I hide so well in the

hollow fist of last night? Rain gathers my fringe like wild
vegetables. This service station has red eyes and a

gold wedding band. Intent on making the highway

last forever, yellow rooms of whores stood still and
across from me, giddy with nights of mystery. How

the men – in their travelling suits, come out with

animal eyes blinking and pints of milk in hand.
How we slowly become at ease with the traveller. It

looks a bit like russian yorkshire here, with cows

from switzerland and ramps of olive farms to
practice driving on.
Poem [when Blossom came to town]

I arrived cold.

Afraid of coats and Greek easter

churches. There will be no crying
in the village if there is no
village after the earthquake.

Who is knocking on my floorboards? The smell

of an old, festering moon as we clamber into
your hot car, bodies rinsed from the
longish day. Because record players stopped being
built into vehicles, I have nothing with which to
interrogate the horizon’s side profile but my
panicked and tuneless harmonica.

Wind the passenger’s window down, gently this

time. Find a rock in your pocket with a million years inside,
chuck it into faceless wilderness. As long as you are
willing to ask, I am – at best, mildly fine to answer.

For almost five weeks now, I forgot that ugly things

like terror and roses and bald patches existed.
A collection of soft and cold things as we
drive up the mountain to get to the other side. Or just
an interesting conversation. I can never tell these two apart.

Over the other side and on the descent, split the slice
of bread in two. This is the moment when the
village crumbles, and we stand under stairwells
with robins for hearts.
It was just like living

There were times I forgot your

name on fresh weekends, birthday
parties and held only incidents of
you sat there with your tongue out and
eyes the nose of a poorly trained dog.

Everytime I’m on the verge of something

brilliant, it turns out to be a yawn, lover
he said – there is something
missing. Sure. Nothing quite like walking
eight kilometres besides the soggy beach
with a whole bucket of cigarettes to get
through. It is midnight now and I am still

walking, surely I will feel terribly marvellous and

wonderfully sad forever. Every morning it
climbs into the sky before I wake and plasters
itself there. A little obtrusive, I think. Sometimes,
it even threatens me, you know. When I’m tired
it wears a pair of kind, brown spectacles.

The pine tree –

I mean.
Hear me out - spring ‘24

I think I would like something to be held

above my head. Behind me, mulberries

drop one by one as they slowly release

their fingers on the ceiling until a sudden

and long fall into my mouth. I am watching the

dragonfly drown in the greasy saliva of my dog and

somewhere in the world, I sneeze. Intimate

with the morning and all her sizes, how she

hides in different times. I must write to you and say

how I am thinking of happiness and how long one can

manage to hold it for. If there were windows in the garden,

I’d open them. The dragonfly eventually dies but no one flinches

‘cos no one is awake. I step aside to let

anyone pass me by, lonely eyes on a tired face.
POEM

In the general whiteness of

the world, nothing compares to the chair
on which you sun yourself. Or the memories
which sit a little out of reach. Will never wholly have
you. I understand the days are numbered, I just keep
forgetting to tally them off. Oh lord - is it always
so good as all this? Can it always be so wonderful?

The only people besides me is a very young couple and a very

old couple, and they touch each other the same
way under the sheets. And I have no shoes on. And I must go
home, for the clothes are dying on the line and a live
fish waits on the countertop, ready to be salted and
eaten at a table for one.