warriors

lying beneath you with your fingers around my throat like a fragile butterfly with wings of steel, back to front c's ready for the alphabet to proceed, your eyes came at me

and in one moment we both knew you would or could stop me breathing with one silly quick swipe – perhaps this was the night

we stayed there, linked by history and fear, a strange samba of full-stops you on top of me, looking through me, some piece of shattered glass ready for the splicing - i sniffed your body on the verge of the horizon, one foot on this flat earth ready to step off and you smelt like neon

we got it – that hate comes in layers of long unravelling misunderstandings, of the sun seeing its own burning, of a fish watching its own scales beneath the iridescent lights of exposure and do it i said, my spirit already a sad haiku, ink wild, red and smudging as our tiny son's eyes shone from outside that disco ball room looking in

just a room for a bed and wet cheeks that's all

i made no call to anyone that morning after, my throat a moat floating and even now as I cradle my boy's sadness in dusty moth hands, lightening sharp and almost serene as the years the years the years, these years move

you did release your grip that night, our son and I still flapping white beneath your wake breaking, then mending, then breaking and charging like warriors