1.
Beside my hips my hands were bedspreads,
creases folded over themselves, clenched tight
and restrained by the quivers made
as I dragged oxygen in from the atmosphere.
Everything seemed to stick out
too much.

I had been waiting for this,
for the empty streets and the heavy road signs
to tilt towards me:

you sat next to me,
the way I pulled my heart away
and pushed my stare into your bones
must have told you something. Nothing
existed anymore, only your eyes
that spoke to me like untuned guitars
instead of the grand piano solo you promised me
in a theatre packed with faces listening
to the volume of our love as you hammer out heavy chords
in E major and softly with felt-tipped fingers
cause whispers.  

2.
Everyone would be too self-involved
with their own lives to come, anyway,
trying to smother everyone else's love with how stunning
theirs is,

or like me, sat in a flat,
where self-loathing ricochets off the walls
overpowering the world so it's just me,
in a room that reminds me of how it must feel
to be kidnapped. Only I could get out if I wanted,
only I could open the curtains if I wanted to,
but outside there is only love that is not mine
and people walking together

like that girl with a limp holding a man's arm, looking drunk
but happy. I remember them and remember how it felt
to have carbon dioxide ripped from my bloodstream --

like a pin, an eyelash fell onto the pavement
that the girls high-heels beat the heart out of,
I think it was pretending
to be you, uprooting and nose-diving
fast and far from me.