Somewhere, a woman moves five hundred

and eighty three days closer to her wedding night 

although she’s not aware of that yet. 

And once I had a heart so wild a whole 

continent had to reintroduce the hunting of wolves 

to stop it haemorrhaging and howling everywhere. 

In the house of adolescence, someone’s kid brother 

just asked the flocked wallpaper what a hard on is

and a spider plant wick with spiderettes laughs. 

I’ve been running these streets the way 

salmon run rivers for decades now and still 

I don’t know the true depth of my shadow. 

My next door neighbour has become 

a paid up supporter of broken wine bottles 

neglected in overgrown communal corners. 

In the films that play in my head, love is always a fist 

with sticky, goggly eyes attached even when it is

a whole meadow of people just walking away on repeat. 

When nostalgia laces up its Doc Martens 

I hide every one of my anxieties in the attic 

until it decides it’s ready to clop off again. 

My mother once thought about burning down 

the house but the idea of all the murdered moths 

made her throw three boxes of matches away. 

I used to be the kind of person that fucked reluctant 

men in lakes as it rained. Now the kind of fucking 

I do involves the subterranean chasms of my head. 

And I have never met a bird that is mad 

to this day although I’ve walked enough 

thunderstorms in search of a trace of one. 

My longing has been haunting 

the bathroom plughole for months now 

so the cold water tap is terrified of dripping. 

Another lonely rat was shot from the smashed

kitchen window of number seven this morning. 

Confessions can explode as distant as Polaris. 

Don’t steal my telescope next time you decide 

the stars have aligned for another leaving.