Lyke Wake
tonight we are the accidental brave. picture us:
downing dread with our coffee in church pews,
a congregation of two in waterproofs, waiting
for a modern remedy. forty-two miles due east
without sleep, our feet will turn to sand
and dust.
this is the night we revert. the world is plasticine
and our thumbs have the power of glaciers
and gravity. here, we are cartographers,
mapping our sense of self in steps
and ignoring the ache of our soles.
perhaps if we draw grids across the gap
between you and me we will unmake the paths
of our history. we step again and again,
on and on. the night is a blur of boundaries
between our head-worlds.
at four am we sit on a touchstone to rest, and watch
a city’s circulation lit up like a medical scan,
blinking. to you I am a silhouette
sinking to its roots
layered with last week’s late-night call,
and the white-electric hum of your voice.
the last few miles are a fight of wind-stung eyes.
neither of us wants to be the one who gave up
so we walk red-raw, right to the last.
the next morning in the hostel recovery room
daylight has the haze of a dream’s afterwards
as if we hallucinated the mists and the moors
and their histories. across the table,
you clutch your coffee cup like a life ring.
the dregs in the bottom stare back at you
like a hanging question.
The Kindling 