We hold you tight against us
against the tide of momentary forgetting
the tempered stones beneath
cut like a bitten cheek, ache develops
under red light only
brightens like the false dawn in the far north of winter

we hold you tight against us
this will always be
this moment, shield-like, here
which you leave behind you
though you may think you will shoulder it
always, heavy, unchanged

we hold you tight against us
because the rules are barefaced tricksters:
no thoroughfare
but through those cross currents
the smell of your own lacerated blue, a smile flotsamed
on windlanes that had once blown furrows through
the shallows of 3am

And now you find yourself here
be it a sluggish ocean, forests of needles
a tearless desert
yours and yours only to boat, catch your clothes on
thirst through

we hold you tight against us
salted throat, pinpricked
sand in our eyes
that moment is still this moment
modelled by grief, hollowed
rounded, annealed
forged
its planes reticulated
shaped now to fit you

all the timeless while
we hold you tight against us

~

for Alice and Antonio xx