new love after surgery

new love after surgery

soon she’ll roll onto the side with bath tap burns

big veins, sketchy pigmentation, big pores

and that side won’t exist for you or her –

soon she’ll be floating in the centre of your wails

her other side, dark as roast dandelion tea

peppered with dark hairs curling like herbs on ice

hairs scattered over paper bark skin in ritual

scattered to summon the gods of your hanging fortune

shaped like a chipped protractor vainly trying

       to trace a perfect arc for a corner sun –

       that’s the side you’ll answer to all night

those are the hairs that will cover you by morning.

oxycodone an anti-compass, giver of a grudging warmth

while she’s ensconced in your able side like language

charting your beard line, pressing the ice pack down

by the muslin cosy you cut from an old bridal veil

and you find that your groove in the bed has mutinied –

two halves of halves coalescing in the salt lamp light

wreathed in your wails, and footfall, and the ceaseless gnawing

of the rat who raves like a poltergeist in the ceiling –

dishes washed in a basin of black mud are clearer

than your mind after three days of pharmacological healing

       and yet it’s enough for her to remain afloat –

       is it because of you or because she’s young

you think, scissored by her legs, falling to heavy sleep.