March

Everyone knows from the movies

how it’s supposed to go.

Juliet is the sun.

Love, they say, is all crimson and honeysuckle.

But you were a punch in the gut.

A stray rock, unatoned, untamed,

striking the raw placid water

with a base thud.

All I felt was the glass bonfire

rise into empty air and

nothing else.

Don’t tell anyone

but I swear I was only half a person

until I saw your face.

As a bare-ribbed dog

I watched you cut the room

like a fault line.

Left hand, left pocket

right hand, right pocket

of your black bomber.

Under your feet

the great interminable waves of sorrow

trampled like pennies in the dewy dust.

‘Nice arse’ said the lad beside me

and he was right

but I wouldn’t tell you until a while later.

And it’s kinda funny,

how much we’d tell each other in the end –

daydreams beneath the sound of rain on your skylight

the things we liked about each other’s noses

the vagaries of our mothers’ cooking

seasonal habits of jellyfish

favourite album openers

sleepy murmurings of love and death

and furtive birthday messages (I still have the cards).

All the same

if we’d never breathed a word in kind

I’d love you even still.

But maybe I’m just too romantic.

You always said I was

and I never quite worked out if it was a joke

or not.

And now I wish there wasn’t so much in the world

that makes me think of you,

you who set the path in visions.

Half-memories in the soughing March wind

and tattoos beneath my skin.

Like an empty glove and I can’t find the fingers.

But I guess that’s life –

tell love it is but lust.