The End

And so we sat on a red tiled roof four stories up, looking out on the town glittering with the streetlights in the dark, and we could have fallen to our deaths but we didn't care, because as we know alcohol sucks the fear from your heart by osmosis. And there we sat arm in arm and you were saying words to me that touched me right in the soul, although I can't remember them precisely because the alcohol blurred them like ink on paper. And though we weren't watching our watches we heard voices crying out across the town, dix, neuf, huit, and the light was all golden, sept, six, cinq,and we held hands I think, quatre, trois, deux, and suddenly the whole year came back to me rolled up in a ball, made small, every thing I saw everything I smelt tasted heard every word I said every word my fingers scratched out, typed out, everything, all at once, cancelling each other out so that in effect it looked like nothing, felt like nothing, un.

Bonne année!

nothing.
everything.
I love.

you.

It was pancakes, actually

I wake.
Above me, my clothes,
hanging next to your clothes above the bed
and you're gone I don't know where,
though from the kitchen
I can smell something
cooking and it
smells like
a future.

The Gift

You sit on a bench in bright sunlight, grinning because I hadn't seen you and had walked the other way
and I'm a bit annoyed because I've got a heavy case and because you didn't bother standing up although I'd come all this way. Beside you is a longboard and I think it's yours. The wheels are the same but the board is different. "You've changed your board", I say. You flip it round to show me. It has new grip. Bright blue. "Do you like it?"
"Pas trop," I say. "Too flashy."

Your face falls. "Its for you."

I'm shocked and silenced. Sorry.
"Tu l'aimes pas?"

It's not that I don't like it no no not at all. I just wasn't expecting it. I said I wanted to learn but I probably didn't mean it. No I definitely didn't. Its just one of those things I say sometimes. What am I going to do with a longboard? It's heavy it doesn't match my shoes I'm going to fall off I'll be terrible I'll look stupid people will laugh at me. And now I've hurt your feelings.
I feel a little burdened. I say nothing.

"I can change the grip. Any colour you like. I can take it off."
I hold your hand and see where the skin has been left rough putting it on in the first place. I sense the hours you'd put in making it neat and perfect for me. I sense the disappointment you're trying to hide.

"Maybe tomorrow you can take me for a ride?" And if I fall off and hurt myself, at least I can say I tried.

Je viens te voir

Here I am again.

Though I've not been here before.

Sleeping on the floor of a ferry

midway across the La Manche in the middle of the night.

Different places, modes of transport,

destinations, even;

but the same feeling in my chest.

Like I'm some pilgrim come to see

a holy relic

(you.)

Days

It seems the days have slipped away like water through a sieve. Looking back into the sink they seem somewhat foreshortened, as though they went quicker than they did. It's a trick of the light, at least, they taught us that in school. And it is, it truly is. Each second took as long as every second has ever taken and the days of our childhood passed no slower, nor any faster. Tell yourself that. Tell yourself that though the year is almost gone it was nonetheless a year of as many seconds, minutes, hours as any other. That you were bored for hours. That you waited in queues for hours, that you were happy and sad and happy again for hours and hours and hours. In your head it's flattened down into some kind of box of photos and you'll say, 'where did the year go?' because that's what we always say. Well don't say it. I won't say it. I won't say it now and I won't say it on my dying day. I refuse to see time that way.

I will see it as a walk in the mountains. The path ahead looks long but once it's done I'll look back and, far below, I'll see where I started from. Foreshortened by the distance. But I'll know how far I've come.

Festive Advice

Never go to the cinema on Boxing Day,
unless you want to sit in a dark room and breathe in
turkey farts.

Presents Past

Christmas Day. 

Not this year but many years ago,

I received a princess dress and a special set

of stones which, when put in some kind of solution

turned into little plastic gems.

What happened to them? 

No trace of them remains. 

I see them in the palm of my hand 

as in a dream. 

What other insight have I to give on a day like this? The church seems emptier, true. Who here still believes the words we repeat? Not I. And who really likes turkey? I don't. Who really means thank you? I do, I still do. And the tree is more beautiful than ever. But the gemstones, what of them? I think of them as I amass my small pile of cherished gifts, worth more in money and practicality than plastic rubies. Where did they go? 

Did they dissolve, perhaps, when we stopped leaving out mince pies, and a glass of milk?