THE OCEAN

LXXXVIII. our cyber dreams

i see now how the monster
under the bed drew into the beer garden, where i sat with starry eyes
on one night of my birthing adulthood, looking at you.

                              (but i'm still just a girl
who doesn't know what to do about the world,
                                         who can't unfurl her dreams
like she thought she would one day --)

and i wonder if you think of those nights
spent with your body pressed against mine,
whilst we watched the glowing cyberdog
reel in red and rainbow lights.

and long into the dark, you'd draw patterns on my back,
catching my hair under your elbows
                    and so seldom,
did that monster dare come close to me
                           when you were there --
hardly ever did it come up
to close its claws around my ankles and throat.

it barely came unravelling out of the coils of smoke
from cigarettes i would later regret
when you were by my side --

and even when i caught it in the corner of my eye,
and it crept by you and into my lungs,
when i felt it touch my trachea and drag me down
your hand would hold mine
until we drove it all away.

              (and only your hands could do that)
and i daren't listen to love anymore
because she breaks my heart,
telling me that i'm a child no longer --

when i'm popping pills in the bathroom
and dreaming for another day --
and there's glitter in my throat
and i'm imagining you dragging me away from this place --

when the monster was on my spine
like a spider -- like hell on earth
when i saw it coming to open my juvenile mouth --

then i realised i wasn't a child anymore,
                  not made of pearls and shells
          like the castles of my girlhood;
only a gangling hybrid of female flesh
with that spider hanging sadly at my shoulder --
                                 and i've lost you to it, i know.

(03/10/2017)