Lesions and ganglia. Not buds where wings would grow.

*

And what there is of you is only what I blurt in unguarded moments. I wonder if the other passengers on the bus hear me speak your name, as my i-pod takes me back in time. For no wound ever heals, not when I whet the blade on my breastbone and press it to the fistula of leaking memory.

*

And as I get older, I see myself as a fossil crushed beneath eons of rock. That I was soft inside can be deduced from my distant descendants. I am an impression of bone, only revealed when strata crack. When mountains erode and fall.

*

And my head is a vault. A museum. A cemetery. A place to deposit artefacts from a bygone era. No, an attic to store the things I cannot bear to throw away. It is enough to know they still exist, safe above the floodwater.

*

And I can’t recall what it was that used to matter so much. If I could live my life again, I would not expend so much time, energy and money on chasing after you. But nor would I lock myself in solitary rooms, sweating to create sketches of imaginary people on sheets of paper.

*

And I am desert dry. Flakes of skin form a layer of volcanic ash. My footsteps can be traced back to Africa. Your fingertips palpate lumps beneath my flesh. Lesions and ganglia. Not buds where wings would grow. I am still walking beneath an unreachable sky.

*

And I dream of roads and houses. Of routes with a strange topology. Of journeys without arrivals. Of arrivals at empty houses. It never occurs to me that you are nowhere to be found.

*

And when I wipe steam from the mirror to see my face to shave, it is only my eyes I recognise. I realise I would probably walk past you in the street and not know you. One more morning when nothing has changed but only the sun looks the same.

*

And I don’t have a passport because I already travel too far in my dreams and am exhausted in daylight. There is one photo of me on the coach to Morocco. I have long hair and a beard. My feet are bare beneath the bright blue flare of loon pants. There is a reflection of you in my Foster Grant aviators. You are telling me to smile.

*

And you are in every story I write. I correct your teeth and cure your spots. Give you all the best lines. Yet don't include your name in the dedication. I call it poetry: to find beauty in lies.

*