44 sunsets
I should I have started writing this sooner, while your words were still fresh in my mind. I think we spoke about the sea, I know we spoke a lot about the sea.
Walking along the cliffs edge, redrawn over and over, you tell me how the houses here can disappear. The edge creeps closer and silently they slip into the sea.
There was a campsite you used to walk past and last time you went there it had fallen in. You describe how you looked at that empty space carved out of chalk and wondered how it might feel to lie awake there under a blanket sky.
You had to be careful with your step and so they kept you close.
And you would bury your shoes in the sand and hope for them not to be taken out to sea. Caught in the rip tide, one curves one way, one the other, washed up one day on distance shores, never to sit side by side.
We waded through the estuary in all our clothes and drank vodka and coke on the inlet, carved out of the sand. I didn’t like the taste, it was just so they wouldn’t smell it on my breath.
You imagine the water to be inky black with trails of seaweed glinting green and wet flesh.
In fact it was pale against the dark; opaque, smooth and thick like warm soup, with the soft silky steps of sand and the feel of stiff wet denim against skin. The water reaching up to our chests as we held our arms high for no other reason than that’s what we’d seen them do.
The moon rose red over the sea that night, we thought it was the sun, that something had slipped and reversed the night for day.
And on that same day, the same spot, but sometime later. I watched 44 sunsets in one day he said, and the blood moon did not rise.
He always swam out a bit too far.
That’s how I felt in the city.
Published in issue 9 of Soanyway Magazine.
Read here
The last touch
Low life, low light and no sharp edges.
To roll from bed to carpeted floor and out the door without standing upright.
I lie there and still, in half dark, half night, regretting the things I said, acquired from me with such gentle skill.
And still
it stings.
Worn out dreams, more vivid than ever, waking exhausted to greet another dull day,
wondering why I bothered to set the alarm.
‘Okay, campers, rise and shine!’
Do we still think it’s gonna be an early spring?
Lets count the days since the last touch.
When the shop assistant reached beneath the screen which divided us and brushed my hand with his, ever so slight.
Is this what all the fuss is about.
And do I need to start over from scratch.
I decide to ride it out.
The screen reminds me of american prisons movies and I want to press my palm against it
and have him mirror my touch, fingers outstretched and touching, almost but not at all,
the expectation of warmth.
But the exchange is finished it’s clear and so I take my items and leave.
I’ve been taking tips on loneliness from astronauts in space, a pilot and a child prince,
and a king with no subjects
who commands the sun to set at dusk each night
and rise again in the morning.
Its good to have a routine I guess.
I was thinking about what you said.
I don’t know if that ever goes away, or if it just becomes quieter.
Moves to the back and waits.
It must be hard to be sad in a place that’s so idyllic. Or does it help.
Makes it ideal or unreal in a way.
Does it help to tell yourself
that this is what sadness should look like?
We feed ourselves and we do on mass, in panic and in bulk. The sewers bulge under the strain. People please, we cry, we’re all frightened and hungry here.
I like you so I’ll keep my distance.
I love you so I’ll keep some more.
Stay well, stay home, stay warm, stay sane.
Wont you stay now, stay now
and all of the above.
I can’t seem to get that song out of my head.
That Thin Air (extract)
She wrote to me about the fires and described how the sky was a smoky red haze and the air smelt of burning wood, how the smell reminded her of being in a spa.
‘And the falls of ash came down. Tasting the ash on my tongue’ she said, ‘That was gold and pink, like honey in the morning.’
She wanted to hear more about him. She wanted to know what he smelt like. She said she felt done with the city.
She talked about the ash clouds and yet I couldn’t see the sky anymore. The cloud here is like a blanket. The darkness is thicker than the smoke.
‘I wasn’t sure if this is what you had in mind.’
And there’s the image of the mountains draped in cloud with the birds which reveal themselves to be flex of greasy dust upon the glass.
I liked it better before I think, when you described it to me and wish I could see it again that way, thousands of birds flocking across the view finder, interrupting the slow movement of mist and forest and rock.
That Thin Air (2019) was commissioned by Art Licks and TACO! for Art Licks Weekend Radio 2019, supported by Arts Council England and Outset.
Listen to the broadcast below or here.