Twenty Three Fifteen
Don’t look at the sun.
*
This is the last thing
that you tell me
before you leave.
Or one of the last things.
*
You could look at it
through a colander.
That’s another.
*
The thought of standing in the garden
with a colander on my head
is not appealing.
Then I watch a video online.
Stupid pre-caffeinated me.
*
I read that the birds will stop singing.
*
The first time I kissed you
we were in the dark.
I walked you home
as the sun came up
over Connswater.
*
We had been a secret
from everyone
including, at first,
ourselves.
*
These last few weeks have been
*
I am going downstairs to find the colander.
*
The grout between the tiles
on the bathroom floor
began to crack and shift
as this began to happen.
I think about the ground
beneath our feet. The grout
sticks to our soles.
*
I am not sure what just happened.
*
Black is white and cold is heat.
*
These celestial bodies
overlapping
in full view.
*
The sensation of a sharp-edged
sliver of grout
embedding in a slightly clammy
sole
that pads the tiles
this way and that way.
*
Oh, my appetite for spectacle
and for other people’s appetite
for spectacle and for other people’s
tweets about their appetite for spectacle.
*
Like a big dandelion head
made up of wee crescent curves
that piece of paper
I held up in the breeze.
I couldn’t photograph the shape –
the flowery shadow with its punctures –
cos I had the colander in one hand
and the paper in the other.
*
Trending and trending in the widening
*
The night it all came out
I had my first panic attack.
Then my second
and my third.
*
Bonnie Tyler’s hair
is almost as big as ever.
*
Where am I
without some digital witness?
*
This thing we do
this life we share
terrifies me –
the truth our love
withstands.
Nothing
should be
this real,
surely,
these flimsy days?
*
I know you told me not to but I looked.
*
Self-portrait with red plastic
Swedish-made
colander under my arm.
*
There’s this thing
you do with your mouth
when you zip up your jeans
the same shape
every day
sort of an awww
sounding shape
as if you are going to say
orange
or oracle
or ordinary
or orbicular
or orchestrate
or organism
or original sin
or orientate
or orbital.
*
Let’s do this together
in 2026.
*
My eyes feel wonky or maybe I’m imagining it.
*
I didn’t see them at first,
those sickle-shaped nothings
surrounded by shadow.
The colander was too close
to the paper. When I pulled it back
I said wow then heard my neighbour’s
smartphone click a photo
and felt stupid for a moment
and then thought she is stupid
for taking a shit photo of the sun
and then wanted to share with her
this evidence and then thought
I’m probably holding it wrong
and those curves are just the curves
of the holes in IKEA’s design.
*
Cloud and moon and sun –
one obscures another.
*
There’s a looping time-lapse video online:
the sun contracting then expanding
in negative space.
*
I love that you
unzipped
your mouth
unconscious awww
every sleepy morning.
*
Turn around bright eyes
don’t leave.