Learning to swim

27 degrees in the shade but never enough to  bring us back to earth. 

Every drop of sweat from underarms was glorious damp and crumpled sheets of abandoned bed, every sunburnt cheek the flushes of ecstasy, every layer of peeling skin a reminder that there was so much time to take each other off and expose the raw selves underneath.

I wasn't allowed to find my bearings. It ruins the magic. I must leap,  naked and terrified, engulfed and consumed by the fear of drowning. I must dip my head and be cleansed, burn with the chill or die ignorant ashes. 

I trusted, and I leapt. I expected revolution but breath deserted me. My lungs drew waterfalls. ice rushed my bones. 

Through foil and saline, I swore I'd never do it again. Was it not sufficient to destroy my body and flood my mind with fear? 

'No,' you laughed, pushing tattered spectacles up your button nose. 'And darling, you never even swam. All you did was dip your toes.' 

For Ben

Catch my eye, my love,

I hope the fleeting glance gives you the smallest ray of hope that it's not just you, it can't just be you.

If it is then what are you but another of Ginsberg's angelheaded hipsters perpetually struggling against the darkness?

if it is, then we are all doomed.

If it is then you will never throw off your shackles and run defiantly into the night with an army who bear your scars and will carry you tear choked and stumbling when you can't find your way,

You will never surface gasping every single breath the first and last you will take, never fix the watery sun in your sights and pierce the membrane emerging into the sunlight sepia tone can't fix,

You are not alone, and my love on your broken body you keep the secret of a life which has threatened to destroy us all;

But you had the strength to fall from grace, to land on asphalt and linen and padlocked cabinets.

and I swear you have the strength to climb, even if your hands bleed and your lungs burn because there are countless like you, dangling toes and dropping rocks from the precipice and praying for your gaunt limbs to drag themselves back up and tell them,

How you ate the fruit and charmed the serpent and couldn't bear it again, how you crawled destitute on your hands and knees towards the smallest glimmer of light.

If you won't catch my eye, my love, catch theirs, hold their hands and feel the sunlight warm your back again.