Sniff it and see

…softening approach to dissonance

I’ll brush my teeth in case I need to kiss you goodbye

prepare my parting words.

to be inscribed via Kafka’s device upon your chest

change my T for a plunging V

brush my hair for windsweeping effect

and trail perfume on my wrist -

you looked as if you’d let the sun

touch your skin

its pigment veered traitorously towards a summer

I couldn’t envisage

my eyes declined the heat

and my skin itched to be somewhere else

under a freeze frame of you

your hand in the small of my back

proprietarily.

Instead the goodbye evaporated

from the skin of my intent

as skeins above the rim of a coffee cup

are pulled into the air. You recede from view

out of my history

like a time traveller husband

returning to your wife in your real but parallel universe.

Taken from a selection of poetry submitted to Libros International in 2006