Verona

We watched opera in Verona
Over 10 years ago now

I don’t remember the opera
Aida, maybe?

I remember you,
All our childhoodness caught in one breath we breathed together.

Your fragile-strong
Around me, always.

How we learnt together:
My stubborn chin-forwardness,
Able to adventure because of your fragile –strong foundation.

We could stand in the wind together.

That night Verona’s colosseum
Held us together, a basket of stars and voice,
We were so close we didn’t need to hold hands.

Over 10 years ago, now.

I don’t have the words to tell you how I miss you.

Into your hair, we sing

We hold you up
On our broken legs
Glass shards in our feet,
But it is your breath that is failing this time.

We hold you up
Take your heart out of your chest
Put it on the roof for the sun to strengthen

We take each of your fingers
Kiss them gently, take off your hands.
We put them in a tree nest, so they can sleep
So they can stop their frantic tangling and rest.
Remember their writing, the hands they have held
And the banners.

We dip your feet into a bowl of salt water
They are bloodcaked from glass shards and thorns,
From your own blood and the blood your carry in your mouth
Below and above and around you

Into your hair we sing the sea and
Futurepossibles
Some flying fish
Some sunken stones,
Our broken voices just able to curl round your face
To take some of the weight,

Just for today

I wish you dancing

I didn’t know you
I know only your ghost
Traces of you
Snail trails of words

Of marks on my lovers body
In his car
His phone
His email


I felt your fight
Your life, your grief
Pulsing through him

I fell in love with you a little
Your pulse through his fingers

My love for my lover bittered
Through you
You, lemon in milky tea, turned
Us sour

We have never recovered.

I have never forgotten you.

I touch you sometimes in digital space.
My fingers tracing your face.

He left you for me
After he left me for you
After he told each of us about
Marriage
About dlozi and home.

Now you are dead
I hope this was your choice
I hope you took a breath and flew gently, away
From this world of fight
World that you didn’t have the right dimensions for
Too wide, too deep for such small ribs

I hope the choice was yours and
Not the man you had run to
In your pain
The man whose violence played your pain
Out
On your body

Now you are dead
Sky-bound only

I send you sky-fish for travel companions
And I wish you dancing
Happy, wild, hard
I wish you dancing.