Fireheads

I want to climb inside your coffin
Lie next to you
Cheek on your chest

I want to have those conversations
We never had

I want to hold your heart
But I want to feel it beating

I want to kiss you warm,
Feel your fingers start to move
Watered by tearsprings onto your chest

You will wake
You will hold me weeping
You will tell me this has all been a bad dream

We will sit in your coffin like it was a bath
Feet to feet
We will speak of growing up
Of learning to put our hearts in men and watching them
Shattered and shattered again

We will laugh at first loves
Remember the wildness with which we ran
I will soothe you with rhymes about sticks and stones
You will remind me that it was words that broke you

We will grow sombre at ‎last loves
Death strung between us

He placed us carefully each at one end of the rope
We looked down and pulled
Blood
Sweat
We thought prince charming was at the end

He sat on the sidelines waiting to see
Which of our fire-haired heads bowed first

If I had known that
Death lay in the middle of that tug of war rope

I would have screamed such a scream
That would have left him paralysed

I would have dropped the rope,
Run to you and felt your pulse

I would have held your wrists in my hands
Shocked into the silence of 'almost'
I would have breathed out a bridge in front of us
Lead us together into starcountry

Two fire-heads turning away from death

We could have sat facing each other
Playing clap-games
Until it was safe for us to return.

Now I face you in your coffin.
You have no words for me.
No words of comfort
No words of malice.
No pulse.

You lie back down
My tears have turned cold on you.

I must climb out of your coffin
Because he will pick you up soon
He cannot hold the weight of both of us.

One imagined kiss on
One cold cheek
My heart aching
My head filled with the conversations we could have had