- Your neighbourhood poet
TOUCH ME NOT
She could not love the man
Whose company she craved each night; the bed
Upon which they both lay, lovelorn the weightless dreams
Of her youth, faded but ne’er forgotten; it spoke
In whispers of a semblance sought between
The lips redder than a smoked cheroot
She’d once kissed; longed to kiss again,
And her husband’s, terraced across the violent contours
Of a grime-fed landscape. Her heart is yet asleep,
Lost yet in yearning for the sallow warmth denied
Unto herself; it is in love with love. A mirage
That would will mountains into the merest of men
And do nothing for a stricken child. She does not remember
His name, a fettered clasp of wing that could die
At once, her only window to a world
That feeds her charmless fancies; of a sea-door that ends
At the foot of his blood-burned corpse, eyes still
The colour of shadows, rain, and billowy houses in the dark.
Her husband lies alone in a bed
That was never his to claim.