I have not bought a train ticket.
I just wanted a cigarette.
A bird is a bird,
Lure me out again.
I thought you were purifying,
But sweetheart, oh how my hands ache.

Go get your car keys and drive me
Straight down to the sea.
I can wait for waves.
You and I can lie on the sand.
It’s an open invitation;

A gathering of broken shells,
Abandoned buildings.
(Bring your own backbone)
I think that I’m watching instead
Of waking up with a notebook,

Holes written into the affair.
Decades of dawn reign.
Ask an empty house
And the walls shall creak in reply.
Preparing for what we can’t see,
She wants God after eighteen years. 

Now I am a thief;
I have stolen away
What others crave.
I took on a challenge
Of which I am afraid,
Have no use for;
No small or easy
Work for idle hands.

I’m not sure any more
Which “me” I speak for.
I refuse to believe
That the drink
Made me think
It’d be fine. I
Swallowed slow and
Steady, watched
The world go by,
Sure my eyes
Took everything in
Straight and sharp
For once, for once.

Guilt is sat here
And refuses to
Be shaken at all,
And it could be
caught-up-in-
the-moment, but
There are these
Tremors in the floor;
Earthquake approaching. 

I’ve been watching you from this window pane
For so long you grew into my bones.
You taught me the lessons I needed to
Understand that I sat behind glass. 

You’ve had the time to make amends, and
let alone little boys-
The world waits for no man.
You can’t fuck me (over) again.

Where did you all go?
Was there a meeting that I missed?
When I closed my eyes to kiss
Did I miss the neon sign?
Deaf to the air raid sirens
That called evacuation,
Cause of the hurricane
That swept you all inside. 

Tiny frosty teeth to bite across my shoulders
Tiny frosty fingers to trace along my hand

I am autumnussexual
And hiemsromantic.
An attraction to the cold,
A perversion for the dark.

 We decided to take a walk through the woods near his. The trees were lit up by something I couldn’t see, but surely it wasn’t the sun. The smell of warm earth and clean air were almost invasive. My favourite perfume. I could feel the hot stones through my shoes, they had soaked up a day’s worth of sunshine. Our speed was somewhere between a march and a ramble but it didn’t really matter. We weren’t going anywhere in particular. It was a soft, quiet afternoon, and the trees had been splashed with liquid gold. We didn’t say anything, didn’t touch. We didn’t need to. It was one of those pillow-soft silences.
 We turned down a smaller path after about ten minutes (600 seconds) and began walking downhill. His hair moved with each step and with the almost imperceptible breeze that brushed against my skin lighter than breath. The path became narrow and I fell behind, turning my gaze to the floor and trying hard to literally fill his footsteps. When the path broadened out again I walked by his side, reluctant but happy to be level with him.
 We came to the river.
 Passing plenty of benches on the way, we found a clearing where we chose to settle. He leaned against a tree trunk and I on my back, flat out in the grass that would start dying. I tried to remember if we’d said anything to one another since we’d left the house. I couldn’t think of one. The ground was so warm. I wondered if anybody else had stopped here before, if we were the first or if there was a long history of people coming here like we did, half by chance and half from memory. The thought made me serious so I concentrated on my breathing, taking in the entire day with each breath, making time lose its sense.
 I opened my eyes. He was watching me. The sun danced across his face and had I half the sense I’d like I would have shut them then and there, immortalised those precious seconds as the last thing I’d see.