Obliteration

Sometimes

I am sorely

Tempted

To lull myself

Into oblivion

With alcohol

I would,

If I was certain

That it would

Obliterate

The memory

Of you.

Talk to me

You said
Tell me
How you are

Don’t write
One liners
Or about work
Or associates

You said
Talk to me

Tell me anything
So I know you’re
Not dead

Or that my
Self-centered
Love machine
Is not killing you

Strange how
You’re the only one
Who ever really
Asked me how I am

The only one
Who wondered
Whether your love
Was suffocating me

Stranger, then,
How I thought
You didn’t care.

When you cry

When you cry

The sweet salt

In your tears

Burns like acid

Searing through

My skin

Right down to 
The bone.

81 billion tonnes of moon-love

Saying goodbye

to you that day

I remember

The moon hanging

in the sky – a perfect

shining orb

It shone on us,

highlighting your face

and those eyes

those eyes

(In hindsight,

with everything that

came later

I wish that mass of

81 billion tonnes

– give or take a few –

had fallen

on your

beautiful head.)

The Coke Act

A dirty canteen. About 60 bottles of coke. Over three months. And three women. One of them was me.

I remember the things you did with love, those tender little acts that stayed in my memory ever since those days from long ago.

We’d have a coke each during the break every day. You’d take the bottle, bend the straw and place your thumb over the mouth, shake it, spray some out until the coke was ‘flat’ and give me the bottle.

I’d drink it with that straw still bent, straight from the bottle, placing my lips where your thumb used to be, as the people around us watched the love that was so evident. We shone. You know we simply shone.

And after all these years, I still can’t bring myself to drink a bottle of coke. It hurts. Sometimes I take a sip or two to test myself and always grimace. It still hurts.

Because, even then, there were another two. But I fell for the coke act every single time. At least 60 times over.

I still would.

Scotch on the rocks

Scotch on the rocks

Is the perfect antidote

To the all-pervading

Poison that is you