The West Pier

How do you measure the distance between love and loss?

To be with you, from now, means to curtail a part of me, wrap it away, place it beneath my skin
where it will not be touched again.

Does the bird of paradise know what he gives up when his mate succumbs to the dance, we only ever see the ritual, never the long lived after.

It’s true even his feathers leave marks upon her body.

I used to count the moles on your body, and our smells would fill the basement. We’d plant apple trees beside reservoirs, where we wondered how the fish ever made it there.

Now we sleep apart, dreaming of different meadows where autumn springs eternal and tired hands are comforted by touch, and touch alone.

By touch we are alone.

In the morning, when you asked if I loved you, I left this poem on your desk and danced out into the field, headed to the coast.

The horizon blistered the skyline, starlings undulated by the burnt pier.

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