Traces - a poem

Hauled from a blank-sided sleep
by the splash on your face
of an early spring morning –

and a bird you don’t recognise
sings in the tree in the applelight –
each note playing across
your drink-roughened thoughts like

a breath

recollected.

I slide around the edges of this moment –
glide along the margins of your life,
disturbing the planes of your senses –
a sudden taste familiar
as my mouth stops yours

my scent decorates the air
gratefully tracing a route –
your way of escape –
if you could only decipher it.

I’ll wait, though, till you do
and cradle the weight of your grief
in my hands;

ease between this skin of death
and dark. Insinuate a way
through to your dreams –
mark the way more clearly.