A Cheekbone For You To Climb Over
There were nights you ate grass,
just because it was cold and the taste
reminded you not to smoke;
carried tufts in your pocket to chew
as we drifted place to place in mini-cabs,
meditating against the cold. Nothing is solid,
we are as transparent as the terraces,
our boots empty; most of what we know
holds court in the first light morning tricks
over the nearest horizon. In night’s huddled afterburn
you’d be lifting green threads
from between your teeth. Blathering magnificent
secrets; you talk too fast and too Southern French
for me to believe a word. You’d fill your head
with smoke and scream,
but it sounded like — ‘If you touch my face again
I swear
when we walk down the street people
will see a chorus line.
Twenty of us kicking
in a half-moon.’ I still don’t know
what you were trying to make us understand,
if there were nights when this address
was the only thing between us
and tomorrow. I remind myself,
nobody knew enough to say it would be
okay, we were too busy building monuments
in stairwells, waiting for keys to arrive.
In my mind there’s a blue room, a table between us,
winter sun pledging through the window,
a water heater clicking in the background
and you
searching for a coat you don’t need.
Rico Craig is a teacher, writer, and award-winning poet whose work melds the narrative, lyrical and cinematic. Craig is published widely; his poetry collection BONE INK was winner of the 2017 Anne Elder Award and shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize 2018. To find recent writing visit https://ricocraig.com/