silk knickers.
We had taught ourselves to be perfect strangers until that evening — a cool Summer twilight with a breeze nipping the back of my neck. He said hello from the crack in a door, slightly ajar. I said hello back as he closed the gaping void between us, & all that was left of those halcyon mornings when I would make us coffee in silk knickers dissipated in the crisp night air.
A dark bedroom.
Every night in the wilderness of a room that has never been quite my own, I lie, candle burning and imaginations lit by the incandescence. A hand curled into my waist, daily life spoken in the slurred liaisons of an adopted country, or a city spiralling in a galaxy of possibility around my bed.
These are my night-time desires.
Thinking back now
I suppose you were just stating your views
What was it all for
For the weather or the battle of Agincourt
& the times that we all hoped would last
Like a train they have gone by so fast
& though we stood together at the edge of the platform
We were not moved by them
With my own hands
When I make love to your memory
It’s not the same
I miss the thunder, I miss the rain
& the fact that you don’t understand
Casts a shadow over this land
But the sun still shines from behind it
Thanks all the same
But I can’t bring myself to answer your letters
It’s not your fault
But your honesty touches me like a fire
The Polaroids that hold us together
Will surely fade away
Like the love that we spoke of forever
On Saint Swithin’s Day
One year is a long time.
From the top of Primrose Hill.
We sat upon grass frosted with dew, lights shimmering beyond us on plains, rivers, into the night sky. Our hands lay tense and expectant in that space (miles, really) between our bodies, and we mustered vague approximations of meaningless chit-chat. How could we pretend to care about the distances between our lands when the distance between us was so much more terrifying?
He asked me about the films I liked and the music I listened to in times spent alone. I wanted to say something pertinent, something I could attach some meaning to, so he could see something behind the planes of my eager face. Instead I told him the truth. That my favourite film was Notting Hill, that I could recount word-for-word the script of close to every film Hugh Grant had ever been in, and that I hoped daylight would never touch the horizon.
Boy, it hurts.
You were better than whatever came before. Dark and lovely in the Scandinavian sun, slate eyes and hair bleached by the outdoors. You learned to live by your own whim. You were so unsure- unsure of yourself, unsure of your family, unsure of London- but next to me I could feel an unyielding warmth radiating from that sun-soaked skin. Boy, I wanted to kiss it. Boy, I wanted to kiss you.
Ta robe sur le tapis
Et toi dans ma lit
Doux présent du présent
Fraîcheur de la nuit
Chaleur de ma vie ” - Jacques Prévert
House to myself.
Alone in my flat for the night, Hugh Grant movies on endless loop and a belly full of tea. Sleepiness and loneliness in perfect symmetry. It is times like these that I wonder of the need for a partner- in crime, in love. The inertia of late nights in these walls is romance enough.
