I made you into cats, birds, fish.

I made you into a house

for us to nest in.

I turned you into aeroplanes

and ships,

laughed at your impatience.

I changed your skin to

flowers, stars

windows

drew myself a room and lived there

all day

until you showered, flooded

up to my knees.

Next day I drew blue shoes

an umbrella

lined your freckles dot-to-dot around

the intricate edges of fingerless gloves

and pushed my limbs into every garment

until they unravelled

and left me nude.

Yesterday I caught you sleeping

face-up, limbs straight out

pale canvas of your breasts

white and shining in the

light from the telly.

I traced the shapes

across the pages of your skin

drew your skeleton through

onto the outside

and left it lying on your bed for everyone to see.

You step under the hot water

every day

complain about the smell of the ink.

I shrug

watch the images slide off your body

and scrabble sadly into the plughole.

Brother

The days of heat-haze road tar

gassing up the low bright air like water

when we lay cheek-to-street

and looked sideways into the desert-shiver

mirage

soaking up the lovely scorch like lizards.

Does it seem true to you also, brother

that the summers are no longer so hot

and that they feel now like

nothing more than ribbons at our ankles

trying to drag us back through

the calendar

into the rattling, shimmering years

of our childhood?

Conkers

click in rosy noises and breathe back out

expelling plumes of steam

onto a mirror

pick up conkers bright like babies-heads

you can cradle them in your hands

rub them to a shine against

knitted jumpers

next year you will find them deep-delved in pockets

they have lost their new gleam

and will smell like dusty sweetness

like a dark wrinkled thumb

from picking leaves.

Rooftops

I curled the soles of my feet upwards from the heat of the tiles

shading my eyes from the sun

and looked out at the expanse of roof

secret places invisible from the street

the tarmac uncharted and glistening

like the shell of a beetle.

I dreamed of scaling the walls

clinging to the hot brick like a gecko

and the moment I would roll over the lip of the building

and press my skin into the scorched black grit

lie hidden from the eyes of the city.

I imagined the dissolution of street noise

the empty tray of the sky tipping up

spilling warm tangerine juice from the sun.

At dusk I would twist myself into a blanket

pick out each pinprick star with a dab of my finger

and draw the moon closer

until I could taste the silver.

Teaspoons

She bought them for herself as a child

chose the most solid

the heaviest

picked out individually

the silver shapes like swans’ necks

weighed them cold in her hand

felt quiet joy at the heavy plum of each.

She was a magpie

left them jangling in her coat pockets

hanging from schoolroom hooks

and on the walks home

she pushed her thumbs firmly across the steel

trying to taste the metal with her skin.

She breathed on the convex

rubbed against her clothes

and examined the psychedelic dance of her face

in the cupped surface.

In the curved gleaming handle like a bone

she saw a graceful strength

and in the bowl

a satellite-shaped nest

where she could have lain arched like a baby

folded into the crook of an arm.

Cadaverine Magazine 2008