The night was ice cold and sweet and opened around me,
gristling and bristling like a grumpy lover who’d forgive you in an hour or so.
I rattled amongst the low clouds.
On the phone at the bus stop she promised me a hot shower and dry clothes.
In my memory another she imprinted her irises onto the performers and gazed like a sleepy, drunk rabbit into the queer future.
Another she rested her head on mine, and another and another, and rubbed my arm firmly,
like a bird cleaning it’s feathers.

I love the way she lies in her sleep with her arm angled over her head,
like she’s waving at the people she sees in her dreams.
Our knees brushed in the night.
I held her in the curtained morning with the clumsy overconfidence of a wild caper growth.
She lay on top of me with few words, the back of her head pressed into my open mouth,
our knees tessellating,
a layered girl, a girl trifle, a two storey girl.
And it was her soft behind pressed against my jagged misshapen pelvis
and her eating disorder
and my night terrors
creating something very unsexual
as we lay there in our little girl trifle, and her custard spread
and soaked into my Victoria sponge,
and we ate each other’s childhood like soft sweet trifle.

I slut shamed her once when we were teenagers,
before I knew what sexual assault, or the politics of power was.
We used to kiss at parties and her mouth was like a ball of soaking wet ocean
bandaged in cotton wool.

Sometimes people wear her perfume.
I wonder if she still laughs out of her guts like a drunk zombie.
I wonder if she misses the taste of my fingers on Halloween.
Her snapchats are boring and uncaptioned.
I miss her.
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