been, folded slow in the distance, sluggish cream
and sapphire static. add any more dimensions
and can i still call it growth? do i just age?
can i cast thought outside myself for once?
towards what? for who? am i ever not nose to knee?

fine, i’ve left the body to check, and there i am, small
and punctuating, the dot of a question mark the bakerloo
line completes, hooking me round to some kind of home.
like: what’s this called, when we’re sleeping three
to a double and i’m in the middle, somehow not

claustrophobic, somehow full of motion and space,
the proximity finally meaning trust instead of threat?
i don’t check the mirror before i leave. act of peace,
not disdain. the circle line is populated by time
travellers while i’m still deep in yesterday

but don’t worry, i’ll catch up, and near trellik
it’s suddenly future, the annual throng
of buttery daffodils straight like stickbugs,
like us, clambering somewhere through central,
our lips curled like theirs, too, round vapor-

death. i swear, yesterday, this was all ice-charred.
now, vernal varieties of tree budding whorled
and adolescent leaves and i can’t help but think
of all the stems that have broken bedrock
while i was focused on getting things right, waiting

to be found. i breathe in through my nose and out
through my mouth and it’s an incredible thing.

nothing howls, and
the cherry blossoms fold
white and crisp, like bedsheets

bedsheets,
or wine

RARITIES

acorn caps plastic dinosaurs
leaves as big as my head identical
pebbles stolen from the neighbors’ flower beds
then train tickets maps fool’s
gold and eventually a palmful of small
pills. i tell the ghost figurines i’ve been trying
to populate a sort of living museum, each
victim of my love granted a wing, filling it my
challenge of knowing. pinned here, find recurring
dreams, conspiracy theories, their answer
when i asked them to take me to the worst day
of their life and describe the color of the sky:
sapphire paint and human hair and the rosetta
stone. can i worship what’s mine? this is the problem.
i move onto folding moments into catacombs,
as if there are any noble or artistic ways to display
the curse of yearning. from the other side of this bullet-
proof glass, pretty people strung easy, press
for information, hear them say i need you and won’t
you stay and will there be anything left of us,
what a display, contrasted by the evening’s
oddity, behold the semiprecious midnight spall
as curated by the sole keeper of the twilight babble.
and what’s the point? these days not even
my breath is my own. if the words are profound,
let me let them be and let me let them go.
but i can’t forget that the acorn caps are buried
in the woods behind my house and anyway,
you did think there’d be something left of us,
and i stamped that onto the damn moon,
and oh, how many times i’ve tried to slip
her into my pocket like a lucky coin—