Departures

losing CO2 in the Jet2 queue,
staining Carhartt with heartache, 
barcodes beep & promises pall

between staff & sightseers 
& parents cheering up children 
& new lovers arriving
chinos & eyes empty
into a grey tray, passing 
Saint Peter with an automatic 
& cutting through pictureless clouds
to arrivals, you were waiting,
& you opened your arms, like wings





Villa Diodati

like a leaf, you were ambered,
acquiescent, ambling the grounds – 
gravel crunched with Converse 
& a tableaux daydream: 
Byron sailing, or the Shelleys 
in love – & then, the villa doors 
unveiled untouched antiques
& portraits eyeing every word 
like the porcelain it was spoken over – 
& sobering outside, ringtones 
revealed Omicron will part you,
for months or more, before
the sun left for another city,
& the stars began to emerge
with the shyness of spiders




Geneviève


there you were: star-crossed
                      & stark, nipping the neck
               of Calvinus, flicking Winstons from windowsill, 
                              scribbled MA sonnets 
                        & scrunched love letters smothered
                                                    under feet & frown, 
                                          Twelve Carat Toothache
                                     cutting the silence,
            your rib cage crushing, lungs 
                                   heaving in the June heatwave
               with undiagnosed pneumonia
                                  & pleural effusion, 
                                 coughing blood
                            & wheezing cheater




Light Years

another spin around the sun, & since, I’ve learnt that every mirror needs light: if light is c = 1/(e0m0)1/2 = 2.998 X 108m/s (James Clerk Maxwell, circa. 1864), it’s the magnetism keeping us close – if light is electromagnetic radiation (Wikipedia), it’s the life of moths – if light is a wave, it's scattering most from our hearts of silvered sand & limestone – if light is The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), then it’s you refracting all my colours – & if light is a distance, it’s always between us, because I have realised there is not a greater love poem than a blank piece of paper, or the cursor, blinking for us to begin, reflecting me in the screen where you have been waiting for light years