I limped to meet you on that first day. Skinned my legs
down to ground cumin on broken rock and hawthorn.
Time rearranged around me, hours buffeted by its confines, squeezed
into its crowded body like sucking flavour into an overripe peach.
We had waited for this meeting. Salt cracks in your lips bemoaned
these complicated days, remembered when I had need to walk nowhere.
The walk was changeable stepping stones and I more than once wandered
askew, an Alice tumbled deep, rabbit-less and with a dislike for tea.
I knew I had the right place but that didn’t carry much weight when I
saw your absence. It slapped the breath from my finger-smeared lenses.
A body lost so thoroughly as mine has no trouble returning to its single
layering of life. If you had been there I’d have taken you away in smell.
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