Typing heartbreak into Google

Girl walks into a bar
red dress flares up in the corner of his eye
I-I-I the stammer of a pick-up line.

You wanna be the pathogen?

I’ll be the leukocyte.

We were infected, our love spread
like a common cold coughing up
luminous doughnuts we placed
above our heads.
Together we shone brighter than a sex shop
sign that promises everything we already have
but multiplied: girls girl girls open all night
a brightness that blinds, tricked by our own
ectoplasm, a hoax, a smoke screen until
we slipped into silence.

Two days after you broke up with me:

I asked Google a question:

Will heartbreak kill me?

Google told me it might.

There’s a hole deep down in my throat, it’s swallowed my voice
like that space under the seat of your car where everything disappears
oyster cards, theatre tickets, love letters.
Your car –
the one you carried me into, after you
refused to sleep in my bed and I spent the night
running round Brent Cross like a stray dog.
It was midnight and I felt the cracks
in the pavement for traces of love
the same place I once looked for witches and bogeymen.

A year’s worth of memories startle the seas
of my abdomen like a school of fish and
I want to vomit, to vomit you. I hate you, I hate you.
But I also hope, maybe for some fortuitous meeting
on the district line, in a bar, on Leicester Square
and I’ll dive back into the wet of your kisses
but then I remind myself that this
is just
you
in Photoshop
and us ending is as certain as the death of a star
our compound is unbound, helium and hydrogen
have burnt out leaving dust.

If Neruda is right
and love is a journey
our fuel has run out.

To the girl
in the bar
in the red dress,

Place the mask
over your nose and mouth
and just
keep breathing.