Unstolen Coat

All morning the snow has slipped
between atoms,
a whirl of shattered shells,
soundless.
I lie quiet and cold
hypnotised by the whiteness.
The red earth is iced,
the hotel room blind.
Your lips subtracted
from the chaos I call my life.
That life turning in spirals
behind the window
like a broken record
or a Van Gogh’s sun.
How many times in my dreams
have I slept like this
on your warm coat
with a smile, drunk in the light.
How many times
have I met you in blackouts,
our love-making clear as a drug.
But the bed is not unmade,
no coat receives my head .
If only I had stolen it
when it was still our time.
The sheets wouldn’t smell
like a box
of unread letters,
I’d have your curves
to hide under.
When I look at the winter sky
it’s just a blank
getting blanker.
Soon I’ll be a secret.
Soon I’ll run to seed.
And the earth will slip open
like a ripe fig, my love,
to cover my naked hips.

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Seventh Day

Another reality assaulted me
as I watched sunrays on the window
trying to get through me.
No force wanted me to cut my wrists,
no fate to send us to the abyss.
Suddenly you were there, so close
closer than you had ever been.
The baby lay in its red fluids again.
The past had been fully rewritten,
the non-exchangeable hours, razed.
An indigo sky stretched out,
indefatigable.
I wanted to stay there with you,
forever forgetting,
forever caught
in the gauze of unmutilated days.
Letting this torpor do its worst,
bring us together, entwined in a single knot,
then leave me helpless, awoken.
The halt seemed endless
suspension absolute,
how perfect –
when everything was too late.
I couldn’t explain this absurd heaven
to anybody,
my voice had gone in some static sky.
I remained silent,
waiting for the stones to shout.
But on the seventh day, there was no sound,
the stones in the walls rested.