rise in perfect light

i cannot speak with you but imagine
rivers of dark leak across your skin,
these silk sheets and tender arms
unbound to reveal red and black

and the cracks of distant love affairs;
of heartbreak as yet unknown, but already
set into the rhythms of your drumming fingers
as fibres of fuel weave into the heart of the

engine and leave it gasping. i cannot sit with you
but dream in sickened tones of the days
when we are not sitting but crawling, aching,
grasping; or else breathing in emptiness,

bleeding violet loss and streams of indigo
diffidence from chapped lips. i cannot
laugh with you but see us gazing back into
this moment with bitter shades, scorning youth

and the carelessness of those who cannot
see all the ice this planet holds. but i cannot
love you without marking the crinkles in your smile,
or cataloguing the modulations in your ever-escalating

giggles to sculpt them, unwittingly, into my own
figure. so maybe i can hold you long enough to
keep the world from your doorstep, and we can

forget the rest.