tonight i am breathing into the shape of the bed around me, into the hollows and crooks of my own skin. tonight i am looking through the frame of the world that i give it, the black lines i have drawn around things. sometimes i think i forget what is important and then wake steadier because i have never known. these are the last few days of this waiting, the last few days of this two monthed, nine weeked space i have made, and i wonder if i am satisifed. i wonder if the wholeness i feel will be found again later, in the nook at the front of the stairs where i found that coin once, where i curled in against the shape of my childhood and slept. i wonder if these are all skins i can shed and sew, i can fashion into the shapes i might want now and later. i wonder what it will feel like when this absence is made real with its ending, in the awkward moments of some final waiting, the rattle of breathing as it fills and leaves my lungs, the shape that eyes make, found on the floor. i wonder if wanting things could ever be wrong. if in wanting, we make absence.

in the picture of my life i hold in my head, the greying one that is browned at the edges, the one i might hold in papered hands and pass to people younger than me, there, i realise, i am always alone. bent down at an awkward place in my back, a place not meant for bending, with the broadest of chests and the longest of shoulders, i rest my gentle fingertips on the things that i have loved. i wonder if there might ever be a thing to share it with, a shape to sidle up next to in the wee hours of the eighty yeared nights. with feet fitted under blankets into one another, the right on the left, warming in handshake.

today i tuck you into my hip, the curve of bodies and the way they fit together. today, i hold your back up with the cup of my hand, as if you couldn't on your own and maybe you can't. this is what it might have been like, i think. the rising bubble of your breathing makes a space in the room and i can hear it as i press my face against the door, then slowly back away, creakless, down the stairs. are all lives this precious or just ones smaller than ours? jump up, pull them down! lemons!

what is in that one note risen straight up from the page, the shape of it wholly filed and gentle to the edges, dancing on the upward curve of your lips. do you know how long it is since i saw your face?

i think of how the hard thing will be to choose, how this is all indescribable. the feeling of this morning, waking to the back of my friend, grey against yellow - what was that to my heart? how the sun every day streaks itself in a ramble on the sky, how it is all colours and no colour, all at once. to breathe in and to breathe out - what is that? how can we begin, and once we have, is there any ending it? is this why we say things like love? because we like to think we are saying something, we like to name it, even if the name is not attached to anything, even if it is floating, up there above the clocks and the church spire, up there on the pitch of the wind.

outside is that the squawk of the seagull and the sound of the sea? is it the soft descent of night into the longer distance out at the edges, the way that we lean ourselves against things, all the time. the way that there are things there to catch us. against the heavy weight of blankets and the condensing of breath as it breathes across the night, i am filled with things i am forgetting all the time, filled with memories i can't remember until i am here, in this room, my head against your chest and listening to this song. i am learning to fall again, and i fall into everything.

this blustery city is worming its way into my skin, in through all the nooks and crannies, in through the pores. it is written as a dry narrative, one that floats in the air and is caught by the wind, one that lands on that woman's face as she is running, round the park. one that i can taste in the back of my throat as i wake in the closed off room, free of the emcumbrance of air. it is a homecoming that feels like coming home, that seems to be gentle, that seems filled with adventure. next to that and woven in it is an absence, a mindfulness and a blossoming, and a promise i have made to myself, that i whispered to the rock. maybe you can hear it, over there, in your proximity to the things i've left behind. maybe you already know what i said.

so in the nine point five minutes that the computer allows and in the time of the tuk tuk and the coffee thereafter, i will try and summarise all of this. i will try to tell you how my eyes are larger than they were, how my heart is bigger, how my spine is stronger and straighter, my mind sharper, i am more marked than is visible. i will try to tell you how i am filled up, i have been filled up, how i have been living, we have, together. i will try and say that i am changed for it, for the creases of eyes, for the stretching of skies, for the length of time and for conversation. i will try and say that i have been split and opened and i will try and tell you what i have seen. i will try and say that my lungs are larger lungs, my kidneys bigger kidneys, my feet broader feet for all the things they have stepped in on the way. i will try and say that i love you. i will turn in an instant, up and into the sky, and i will try not to be made sad by endings, but to revel in beginnings. i will try harder than i ever have before to make all of this possible. because it is, and i know it.