old fingers

you deleted

cleared
everything onhis
computer

you told me chattily.

my goodness, you said
he must have found that back-up
button and
never stopped using it

you said.


and your words create
a
strange hole in my chest.

a picture of my grandfather
old, hunched,
gnarled-tree like his
fingers growing into the computerkeys
as he hits Control S over and over.


I ask, knowing the answer,

if you had saved, any, maybe
one
or something,
of his backups.

Oh no, you said,
i didn't see anyneed.


and i swallow
hard and quietly
blowing silent
kisses to his old
(gone)
fingers on the keyboard.

one year in

you turn me into
chewing gum


flavourless
and wrapped round your
teeth your spit
making even
my staying power

not strong enough

this

this. this is about
something that mattters.
something that is urgentinthe
momentnow. that wont wait will
come out,
through these hundreds.

hundreds with their
own urgency
to feed on yours
with their fingers,
licking your inspiration
off them.
because this.
is something that matters.

and your face
in that moment. onstage (mikemagnified)
but bigger than stage
and alloftime(hope)
in one moment and all the work comes down to
THIS. because, this. Is some
thing that matters.

sometimes

i am stretched
thin
and elastic sometimes.
(but only sometimes)

and your smile can
bounce off me
and boomerang
back round the moon, grow bigger
and...

(only sometimes)

photomemory

you are brought
back to me
through a curve
in a photo

and a heartflutter
(still,
as ever, nothing
to hold on
to)

milestones

babyshoes,
eat

life is too huge
and you are too beautiful to
shrink yourself like this.

your cheekbones branching
out like whiplines

(mirrored in your
mother's worrylines, darling)

babyshoes, eat.

you are too tiny and
life is too beautiful
to leave yourself like this

(collarbones sticking out
like milestones,
where you have receded from, darling)

and your family. stretching.
calling you from
where you started.

you are So loved

babyshoes, eat.

insomnia

Insomnia (megan)

I send my hands to cup your head

And rock carebears

Into your dreams.

You hands round me

Basketwise

And stories, you fed

Me (halfArchive

HalfImagined)

When our fights were

Selfmade safehouses

-junglegyms we understood

the how to’s of, the length and breadth of

and we ended, if we jumped,

togetherinaheap.

I send my hands

To cup your head

And rock Safe into your

Dreams.