24.

My hands, my fists, caught in yours.
You are my horizon, my sun rises in your eyes,
I am not afraid of the long night in your arms.
As a bird fighting the confines of its cage
my heart had bruised. You have set me free.
I fly to your lure; you hold my jesses
and hood my eyes. In this quiet darkness
I am yours.
How do I find myself kneeling at your feet,
My head in your lap, your hands tangled in my hair?

23.

I lose myself in the ocean of you; my sea, you engulf me. I float in your embrace, flotsam caught in the pull of your tides. Your breath roars in my ears and fills my head with wild sound; my mouth is flooded with brine, salt coats my tongue and burns my throat. You press against me and into me and around me. I crash against your shore, bones cracking, heart shuddering. My body opens like a wound to your kiss; I am torn apart in the swell. My skin carries the weight of your touch, water-slick under my clothes. I hear the seashell echo of you, it plays at the edges of my mind. Your waves break over me and I rise and fall, they slap against my face and my thighs and I laugh as the spray makes bright rainbows around me. I am tangled in the ropes of your hair, caught in the cruel net of your hands. I plunge into your depths, blind, diving further in the terrifying blackness. I have no sight, no sense; only you all around me as I fall into the dark, breathless.

22.

The sun bleeds across the sky and stains the clouds rose and gold and red as the dark closes in. His fingers trace fire along her skin, pale planes and shadowed hollows in the dusk. She shifts restlessly under his touch, sinuous as an eel. Her hair spreads in an inky stain and he pushes it from her face where it clings to her damp brow.

Goosebumps spring up where his hand passes, barely brushing her. She can feel the gentle roughened whorls of his fingertips as he strokes her cheek, her breast, her thighs. She turns to him with parted lips, hot breath, eyes closed and blind in the night.

Her favourite colour is the time before dawn when she looks out as the night pales from indigo to royal blue and his arm is heavy across her waist.

21.

She can't open her eyes because tears leak out and mix with the saliva that has been smeared across her face and she doesn't want to cry. This is unexpected and shameful and exhilarating. She had choked on the tumour in her throat and blinked at the sudden heat behind her eyelids. Now she is grinning and her breath is heavy and quick with adrenaline and her eyes are starry and wet. She opens her eyes as far wide as they will go, eyelashes spiky and clumped with mascara, and the dampness spills out, washing her cheeks in a salt bath. Tipping her head back, she collects tears in the bowl of her eye sockets. Her lids burn from the sting of saline. Her mouth tastes of the sea and she is drowning and swimming and floating on the tide.

20.

The hedgerows are blooming, vibrant and bursting with spring greenery. Along the verges pale primroses cluster in ragged rugs and the wood sorrel blinks white flowers from its trails of heart-shaped leaves. Bright anemones scatter the rounded banks, starred with chickweed. Red campion blushes the roadside and violets are strewn in secret gaudiness, hidden among the proliferation of grasses. In the woods, straight Douglas firs shelter tumbling rushes of bluebells, springing from the whispering mulch of the forest floor. Mushrooms grow softly among the roots and scatter, rotting, across the path. The sun cuts through the leaves, turning the dust motes to diamonds and flakes of gold.

19.

Don't go into the woods, she was told, her mother anxious and whispering as she brushed her hair and fastened her pretty dresses. Don't go into the woods, murmured low, there are beasts who will devour you, crunch on your bones and lap up your blood, there will be nothing of you left for the ravens to feast on. Don't go into the woods, she said, you will be lost on the tricksy paths, the roots will trip you and the vines will bind you.

The woods, the woods, the threatening woods, the dark ranks of trees with beckoning limbs. The leaves that flutter and hiss at the window when the storm whips the clouds at the moon. Mother's quick breathing in the next room, the creak of the bed and the groan of the branches shifting restless. The moan of the wind and the haunting hoot of the owl; her head is full of echoes of words and the wood and half-remembered tales.

She treads lightly, sure-footed in the ragged light. The woods break over her like a wave and she drowns in the sudden hush. There are no tracks here and she skirts round the great black trunks, tracing their grooves with her fingertips. In a clearing she stops. Her skin is on fire and each sense screams as she swims unshackled through this night.

There is something here in the silence, lurking in the shadows. It has waited for her forever, shouting the pain of its heartbeats, chest heaving with torn breath. It falls on her with heavy hands, howling at the smoothness of her skin, the silk of her hair. She sinks into the embrace, the rasp of teeth at her neck, the scorching eyes. You would eat me up, she says. Her eyes are as still as forest pools. I have come, I am here, I am yours.

18.

This girl, they say, drives men to despair.

He says, I can't come too close or you will burn me up; I would halo you with ashes. He wants to hold her but the heat of her body repels him and he dances at the edges, a moth attracted by the false moon.

When she speaks the flames spew from her lips and floor him; he shields his eyes against the blinding brightness of her regard. His face is hot and his heart beats fast, forcing his sluggish blood through starved capillaries, reddening his cheeks and beading his forehead with sweat.

He says, I am scared of you, sorceress, witch, with your burning skin and your heart of ice.

She is radiant, bathed in her own light.

She says, my heart would shatter against your bones. You would cage me and stamp out my flames; you would diminish me for the sake of your pride.

She walks away with the sun in her hair.

17.

Along the canal, the cherry blossom falls like snow. My hair is alive in the wind and strands catch in my mouth and snake my head in a dark halo. The sky is blue and the day tastes of grass and crystals and the iron before a rainstorm. The light falls heavy and golden across the walls of the warehouses, burning them in phoenix hues. I walk quietly and quickly, on the edge, where the dark water stains the concrete with weed.

Here are the tombs where the bluebells march. Spring flowers bright against the green and grey, bugle-headed clusters in yellow and orange. Now the daffodils are pale as ghosts, and brush the graves with translucent petals. Look up and the sun blinds you, reflected in the eyes of the office blocks. The Barbican stands steadfast, caught in the dying light.

16.

this love
it cored me
every exhale tearing the cradle of my ribs
an empty basket i bury my head in the pillow
i try to inhale your scent
feel the impression of your skull
the press of your jaw
my hand is lead without your grip
the space of your arm circling my waist
i bend into your embrace
sink boneless
my eyes scald your face sharp
every time my lids drop tears
leak on my cheeks i taste your salt on my tongue

15.

She wakes up one morning to find a gap in her mind, a grey spot that she pokes at with her thoughts, trying to recall what lived there. The space is like a missing tooth, the gum hot and swollen and empty. Her memories rail around the point, searching for a point of reference, something familiar to cling to.

Something has made an incision, scalpel-sharp, and cleanly removed a piece of her history. She is disordered, displaced, she wakes sweating with terror at the thought of what she may have lost. This is the dream she kept hidden, this is the love that she has forgotten, her first ice-cream, her favourite book, her mother’s hand. Anything could be locked inside, thousands of memories parcelled in pinpoint boxes

Who came in the night to snatch away herself? There is no gradual fade, no slow slide into forgetfulness. Only this blank space, this perfect egg of nothing.

14.

And the sun comes out and the world changes.

We have been living in shadows for so long we have forgotten the sky and are dazed by its clarity. We crawl from our caves, our dark spaces, uncurling and blooming in the bright day. Our eyes sting and we blink back brilliance.

Washed in beams we stumble with our hands held out, newly blind, feeling our way in this remembered place. We are pierced in a million spots and littered with dust motes. Our hearts soar and our salt tears rush down, into our grinning mouths as we turn our wet faces to the light.

13.

The bird has been trapped in the cage for so long its eyes are dulled and it trembles and flutters whisper-soft against the bars. You have opened the door and coaxed it out, watching it puff its feathers and cock its head. It chirrups softly, pours out a well of stoppered song. It is slow to remember the language of flight, its wings stressed and buckled and finally spreading in a rainbow of plumage. This is what it lives for, this wild joy, soaring and jolted on the currents of the sky. This is freedom and pleasure and exhilaration, climbing recklessly towards the sun and plummeting in dizzying rushes, warbling a celebration.

You would take your bow and shoot it out of the sky, spiralling broken to the ground. You would snare it and wring its neck; you would tear it apart with your hands. You would trample it underfoot until the earth was rusty and muddied with blood. This is your sport and you play well.

Quietly I have held it nestled in the hollow of my hand, my fingers tapping the pulse at its throat. Its bones are dry twigs, finer than porcelain; its feathers are silk and its jet eye looks back at me as it spills diamond notes. I stroke its small head, its wings, and it grips me with fierce claws.

It has lost its song and its heart is still.

12.

He sits on the low stone wall, looking out. The colour has bled out of the landscape leaving dulled sand, sooty clouds, a murky sea. The air is thick with moisture and salt from the slap of breakers at the shoreline. A couple pick their way along the beach, bundled and doubled into morose sacks against the wind. He is motionless, impervious to the creeping cold.

He has stayed so long his feet have rusted and his limbs groan like tortured iron. His eyes are steel, greyed by the reflected sky and the churning water. There is no setting sun at the horizon, just the fog of the damp dusk meeting the sea. His insides have been hollowed out and scoured by the biting air. He is crowned by tangled weed and his face is streaked wet. There is a sodden scrap of paper balled up in his hand, the ink smudged and purpling.

The wind rushes and sighs and he echoes like a shell with the crash of the waves.

11.

I fall into you like a rock into a deep well,
Leaping fish, I swim in the dazzle of your waterfall.
I could drown myself in the pool of your mouth, bind my hands with the ropes of your hair.

You slice me as cleanly as a hot knife moving through butter,
My heart is a red moon against your sun.
You are there in my hidden places, in the depths of my forests you find me.

You are the salt on my ice and I dissolve beneath you,
I am lost in the maze of your embrace.
Unwound, my love spills out in great loops. My tapestry is unravelled.

10.

She sits in the window seat, head resting against the scratched pane. The carriage is flooded with fluorescent light and she gazes out at blankness. A ghost world hides behind the glass. Houses and streets bathed in orange light, fragile and trembling in reflection.

Her face in this other space is pale and smooth and her features are blurred. She is insubstantial, she is solid, reaching out long fingers that never touch, brushing the surface between places. She catches his eye in the present echo and holds his gaze steady. They are the only people here. When she looks away the world disappears and she is left with the man opposite staring into the dark. She turns her head.

There is a room inside this room. She sees it when she blinks, the corners rushing round to new angles. She can hear children chattering and playing when she closes her eyes and shadows that have no beginning creep and dance up the walls.

How does she live, this second self? She wakes up to her when she falls asleep and suffers the wrench of the morning.

9.

His heart is a clenched fist and strains and whitens in his chest. His breaths hiss in the quiet bedroom as he forces them through gritted teeth, forces his lungs to rise and fall with the painful suck of air. He is suffocated by the smell of her, choked by the taste of her.

The memory of her touch raises hives on his skin. Her voice roars in his head and dizzies him and he shudders, unbalanced. He cannot see beyond her bright round face, her stomach, her breasts.

He will not allow this to happen.

This is his cage and this is his lock, his fingers burn as he turns the key. His knuckles are tender and shadowed with bruises.

8.

The sky is heavy and grey and littered with iced butterflies that flutter relentlessly down. London has lost its edges: the city is suddenly soft and inviting. For now, the snow is untrodden and folds like egg whites over pavements and cars. My feet sink through powder, shin-deep, and I pony step through the street.

The parks are frosted expanses dotted with early risers kicking plumes out of the drifts and rolling the misshapen bodies of snowmen. People on the way to work in heavy coats and swathed in scarves, stopping to point and click with cameras and phones. Children gathering up frozen cannonballs, readying for war.

A snowflake drifts into my mouth and pauses momentarily on my tongue, the bite dissolving in a frigid kiss. I would like to roll in the snow that lies like white feathers, sink into the depths and see the weak sunlight through a crusting of crystals.

My cheeks are reddened and my eyes are bright with snow dazzle. The world creaks around me.

7.

She sits perfectly still. She is full to the brim and the slightest movement will make her spill over in a hot flood. If the dam breaks she may empty herself out in one great rush, leaving a gasping husk hollow and undone. The tears that slide down her cheeks and snake into the crease of her lips make her mouth round with salt.

She is falling to pieces again and again. Her love falls away like tulip petals, dropping softly from the drooping stem.

She is a matryoshka doll, twisted apart by careless hands. There at the centre the small solid self, wrapped in cracked layers of lost love and forgotten dreams. This is the time when she is broken again. The wrenching pain of a dislocation that shatters her and rebuilds her. It is never familiar. She will always carry the scar of the wound, buried deeper and deeper in the nested memories.

One day she will be a whole doll, a perfect egg, all the unlocking miniatures cradled inside.

6.

This is what you see when you close your eyes. You see her spinning and spinning like a top, arms flung out wide and head thrown back. Her hair streams around her like ribbons and her mouth grins wide. She stamps and whirls and sends her drink spilling down her chin and throat, wiping her face with the back of her hand. She is frozen in the camera flash, giddy and gilded and always laughing.

You can smell her, animal and scent and smoke and wine. She blinks up at you, eyes sleep-hooded, lips barely parted, and falls back into darkness. She murmurs as she dreams.

She is alive in a wash of colour and a tumble of sound. You were dazzled by the sunlight that fell across her, slicing her into dark and light. She danced with strangers as you stood at the bar and waited for her to come back to you, panting and glazed in sweat.

This is how you remember her then, the glowing girl in a sea of black. She is the focus of all your rooms and the walls fall down like a house of cards.

She is the girl sitting on the platform in the snapshot. Every time the shutter drops she is further away, hands folded in her lap, watching the train pull out. She will always be there at the vanishing point.

5.

London Fields is quilted in fog, piling up in a great soft eiderdown. Crossing the park I am isolated, caught between the orange pools of the streetlamps. The mist dissolves the landscape, tricking the vision into premature blindness. I can see my hands and my feet quite clearly. If I stray from the pathway I may drown in quicksand air or vanish in the grey. There are shadows moving in the distance, lone walkers and beasts darting low to the ground. The hum and click of a bicycle leaping into focus and fading back into the emptiness. The Fields are eerie in the ghostlight. This is where one place slips into another in the quiet corners. This is where murder lives. This is where soul and body are divided and wraiths gain life. There is subtlety in the darkness. I stand bathed in amber, washed in syrupy light. The dark and the fog rise up around me and I breach them smartly, clicking heels telling the tale of my passage. I open my mouth and my breath spills out in a great rush: my lungs are empty and I breathe in smoke. My shadow is lost in the sodden evening.

4.

Her reflection peers back at her, hair scraped back and making a pale oval of her face. She is intimately aware of her mirror self, the side that only she can see. Moving closer, she inspects herself, the white paper skin, the tracery of lines as fine as spider’s webs, the faint down of hair at her ears. Her breath fogs the glass and she turns away, the misty Rorschach fading.

The table is littered with pots and tubes and glass bottles of perfume. Her make-up spills out of pouches and dusts the wood with glittering ash. She wields her tweezers with military precision, stray hairs seized between pin-sharp tips and ripped out by the root. The skin stretches and reddens below the perfect arch of her brows. She pats tiny pearls into the shaded hollows beneath her eyes and smoothes cool cream over her face.

She builds up a mask with her foundation, a smooth beige plastering. The dew of a highlighter dotted along her cheekbones and at her temples where she can feel her pulse and the clench of her jaw, blusher roseing the pads of her cheeks. Her eyelids are as bright as beetles and her lashes are fattened and sooty black. She draws in her eyebrows with sharp dark strokes and they slash her forehead.

She paints her lips a deep bitten crimson and lacquers them in sticky gloss. Her scent drapes her with violets and musk.

In the day she is a gaudy butterfly, powder dropping lightly from fragile wings as she spreads and trembles in the sun.

Alone her lover peels back the layers and sees her tawny in the soft light.

3.

The ghost of you lingers in my bed. The memory of you curls around me. The sheets have been washed again and again but I catch traces of your scent in the thin strange morning. You are in my head and burn like acid in my veins. I breathe your breath like I’m drowning.

We lay with our foreheads touching, our lips a whisper apart, eating words.

The night is long and sweltering and your hands trace lazy spirals along my back, count the railroad knobs of my spine. I reach for you in the dark and hug the quilt into your shape. I swim in the deep twilight before dawn and melt and dissolve and lose myself. Your arms wrap me in the muddled place between sleep and life. I have tossed and turned for you for hours, sweat radiant on my brow, running between my breasts and my thighs.

When I turn the pillow to cool my cheeks the imprint of your face presses against mine.

This bed is empty without you in it.

2.

The desk toy clicks smartly, sending the silver balls swinging in shortening arcs.

He is a fidgeter, a foot-tapper. He bounces his pen on the desk and brushes his hair back from his eyes, the specks of dust from his shoulders. In the flat beneath him the couple complain of the constant footsteps that punctuate their evenings and track their dreams. At work he paces and gesticulates and fizzes with frantic energy. He has never slept in the same bed as a lover as he twists and turns like a fish in the net of sheets.

The man is never still.

He says, I am in perpetual motion. He says, I will never die. He says, I am a part in the machine and the machine never stops.

They roll their eyes and clap him on the shoulder, and inform him that what he says is impossible. They indulge his ticks and whisper behind their hands and notify the people who know what action to tale.

He bounces off the walls of his cell. I am not a physicist, I am not a philosopher. I am not mad. He says, there is no such thing as the impossible, only that which exists beyond the known rules.

His eyes are wide and steady and unblinking, deeper black than the sky at night.

1.

I can’t remember the last time I opened my eyes. I am alone in a glass room and if I look the reflections will drive me mad.

The birdsong trickles liquid over my shuttered ears. The snow bird in the crystal cage, its diamond beak prised wide, swollen throat spilling the endless trill. The notes pierce me in places I had forgotten and, needle-sharp, wound me. My soft flesh is warm and alien in this palace of ice, abraded by sharp edges, blushing blue and pink. This is a grand place, and empty.

The tiles on the floor are ivory white and my feet ghost them. My fingers are twigs that snap in the hard frost; my ribs are meshed blades. Every breath hurts, every heart beat rips with simple savagery. I gape and the steam cloud of breath sinks into a pool of mist. I could hide an army with my hot, red mouth. The chandeliers drop light and gems in cold shards.

I peek out from behind the bars of my lashes. I carry my own cage. My shadows fall long and crazed against a maze of mirrors and march in geometric patterns to that point where sight stops and the world disappears.

This is the clock that never stops. I peal with the mad low tone of a striking bell.