worry, often; keep a glass of milk next to the bed for when she gets home; find yourself lying in flowerbeds for a moment of relief; realise that water is always shifting; sleep on the floor when it all gets too much; walk across the city at 5am when it is still too much; lock the bathroom door for a moment of relief; arrive to work an hour early and leave an hour late; realise you can catch the sunrise this way; realise there are worse places to watch it than from the fourth floor of an office building; go numb every morning; make a game of burning your own arm to check you can still feel; watch the infected burns turn the same yellow as the sunrise; go to a nightclub and find a corner to sleep in; kiss someone else; tell yourself it was a mistake; do it again; drive out of the city; keep going; say nothing; seek out crosses; seek out images of god; seek out objects of protection; let her win; let her lose; try to find meaning in any of it; notice the cat has pissed in her trainers and say nothing; absorb the yelling; become a conduit; wash her trainers; create a narrative in which this is your one great love; keep your eyes shut; let her face become anyone else; when autumn comes cut your hair off; feel a renewal; when winter comes remind yourself you could leave; don’t; let her grip on your arm tighten; let words fall out of your head; become a fridge; slowly defrost; watch the world glow orange; take a pill & fight the first man you see; leave your shoes in the street; find beauty in a small town church hall; start a fire; put it out; what did you expect; let the sky unfold; let blood fall out of you in strange clumps; ask your friends, is this normal; ignore the responses; become plankton; float idly through each day touching nothing; touch is where the trouble starts; become a moving target; let yourself be hit; rearrange your own reality; run; let the milk go sour; never follow through; spend a week on the floor with someone else; anyone else; keep running; become the sun; leave