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.