Love

Counting

the dead

animals

that line

the motorway

edge

I miss you.

___________________

Sex Swap

Girls aren’t

built like boys

we think too much

Like…

how it felt

when you touched me

And then after

you persuaded me

to do it, how

you moved your

chair away.

Girls aren’t

built like boys

but I am a robotic,

supersonic

kind of girl

with boy genes

hardwired

to my heart.

So I won’t think

of how you

looked before

and then after.

______________________

Sundry

The walls miss you

The bed calls your name

The bricks hold their breath.

They wait.

The sheets weep

The soft toys huddle in corners,

asking after you

Which one saw you last?

Your clothes pine, abandoned

The food in the fridge counts the days

since you were here.

The milk tells the mould that never knew you

stories of who you were:

A chance

A gaggle of noise

A gush of joy.

Now the stereo lies mute

The lamp not lit since you left

The ashtray’s heart

Yearns for your return.

_____________________________            

Attic

At

the bottom of a

box

I found your voice

caught

suspended

on a

strand of tape

cryogenically kept

fragile

as paper.

_____________________

The Meat Show

You said
let’s swap eye colour
Just for a day
but first
we swapped skins.
You pinched mine
until I bruised
and I gave you a fright.
Later, I wore you
Like a hair-slide
and you stepped out
with me
tied around your neck. 


_________________________

Voyeur

I watched you

through a crack
in the door

but you didn’t see me.

I watched you

cutting up meat

like they had cut the

cancer out of

you weeks before.

I wondered if it had been

branded-

If they had held it up

to reveal tiny c’s

covering its surface.

I wondered

if a tiny c remained

inside

buried deep

where they couldn’t reach.

________