rave sketch - morning after first night

unfurling like an ox tongue from waxed paper

across their heads, her torso, his mangled toes

the Bolivian rug flings sand

onto the tent floor soiled from when last it was packed

after a testing riverside

new year saw him naked in a thornbush

while she – desperate to leave – undid things

phlegmatically. neither can recall how the rug got sandy.

she’s a bare mantelshelf, she’s an open wardrobe

full of magnetised asteroid crumbs

she’s fresh bed sheets paled by former washes

flushed by former tumbles –

impending catastrophe, even impending death

still resinous on the silence

after they clean down the vestibule and blow up

the queen-sized mattress they couldn’t work last night

slip toothpaste and condoms into the siding pockets

flashlight into the slip above her pillow, and

in the fleeting cool of the morning

lie with their feet intertwined

poking from the front entrance like a forked tongue.

sand clings to skin and the colour of the rug

chisels at eyes – the look in his, the look in hers says

I don’t want to do what I’m going to do today.

there’s no life left in me to suck out anymore

I’m antimatter, I’m not anything.

what if we could zip up the fly

open a window slightly and never come out?

he breathes in more astringent drugs

with globs of hard mucus – he doesn’t get higher.

serotonin, some cheese and bacon shapes –

I’ll kiss your feet if you can find me those, I’ll kiss your feet

anyway, and she’s spun around and cherished, nylon blowing

hard against the poles, car after car pulling up

to park within the gum branch confines of their pop-up

universe, music blaring, phones reading 9:01-9:05

phones with no reception, nearly time for opening ceremony

nearly time for the astral travel workshop – still holding

one of her feet, he takes a swing of water lying down

coughs it everywhere, spills the rest. they’re ready.