EVERY DAY           87




You are beautiful enough
For me to forget to breathe 
When I watch you sleeping
And I have dreamed of you
Every sleep for eleven days
I only wake to your morning
*
Once you were gone 
And I fell in a coma for months
A winter without time stretched beyond
What we then called seasons
I had watched you in the garden
In sunlight while we waited
For the taxi to the airport
I pressed my palms against the wall
And slid haunched to the floor
*
We had sustained
Alone in my parents’ house
On fags, booze, juice, pizza and nuts
Every time you  re-appeared
The panic returned
Subdued, repressed beneath the failure
But always the unease remained
How you stayed true
During my endless weakness
I could never understand
*
Left to my futile devices
The lunatic in isolation
With his childhood’s heart,
Regenerated from ash
Crawled, struggled, waded
Through the ectoplasmic puke
Finally stood , declared ready
To meet his deepest terror again
*
We know ourselves reasonably well
Each other, far less so
But we do not sleep in anyone else’s shadow
Now you wake from dreams
Into my morning
And I hold you and shake
From the fear of intimacy.