My frame may be fragile, but it is tough;
It sounds deep on the pavement as I flow to meet you.
Entering, my face lights up at the table of hope,
A flame flying from heels, entering hips, freed through my ears.

Through live skin, I dive towards your gesticulation;
This could be a disaster my hands sing, but I keep on going,
As if every movement of arm, or finger, or eye,
Might excavate, another spadeful
Of the heavy dark pit of my little wrecked heart.

Silence, deep down in the belly, hides behind the words.
Like children on the half-way stair,
We perch on the reclaimed wooden window seat;
The hushness is orbiting the coffee-perfumed space,
And I am listening, anchoring my bones like banisters,
Then uttering, tipping forward and sipping,
As if a boat gulping at the safety of harbour,
As the tea steams under our chins, wets the edges of our hair.

I notice the vessel is slowly unhooking,
I then remember; language itself can loosen and untie
All the misreadings between our palms,
Cells reforming around a landscape where
Brush-strokes reveal what is far and what is near.

Some times I think the only way I will let you go
Is to pierce myself with Sylvia Plath's red tulips;
We can become her floating gulls, aerial, gliding,
Over the teeming fish in the sea.