Here is a picture

Here is a picture I painted. I did it

for you. In one corner

you can see the roses I gave you

on our first date. On the other side

there is the park where we took our first stroll.

Yes, I even included

the gravestones – I knew you’d like them.

And in the distance your foot,

just visible behind the tree

where I hid you.

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Disobedience

My lungs heave up and down, played by my fingers like bagpipes

whining into the night about the injustice of you walking away

from him. How dare you? You’re both so close, such a true pairing,

but my pen never lets you tell him how you feel. You’re

out of my control, not a character, but a person in your own right,

not mine. I want you to run with all your passion back into his arms.

Can’t you obey the ink, just once?

Stargazer

You will see Orion in me. In my rather too much leg. Tucked under neck, toes sticking out towards rainbow galaxies. They itch to track you, unfurling from the spine, down and down and down. Slinky jumping from the arrow head, pointed at your wordy heart. Apocalypse: the constellations shriek. They don’t want to save the world. They just hate the ugly patch our orbit takes. A screwed up sheet in a universal waste paper basket. You will see Orion in me. Orion is no longer. Orion is me.

Between the hour and the minute

They tied themselves together, linking their hands with an elaborate wrap of solder. It was all for the dance; preparation for the endless twirling and spinning that was set to take place during the sixty seconds between midnight and one minute past. But that minute is never just a minute; to the right people, it is an eternity. They were the right people. They never came back.