Unwell

I missed you last night.
I missed your pliant, plentiful body.
I thought, how fantastic would it be
to lift the limp duvet
and reveal your back?
A day’s fresh canvas to decorate
like a home
with kisses.
I’ll run tracks on it,
blossoming like lichen,
making infinite figures of eight
that radiate outwards.

I still speak to you in my head.
That way I can be a person
I was with you.
Perhaps it’s wrong to expect
every season from myself,
perhaps I only work in the summer,
bodypanes charged by heat, light,
why is everything wet, slate, grey?
This is the season for the colour-blind.

Perhaps it’s wrong to expect every act
of the play from me.
I am the beginning, not the tough meat
of the middle
or the peace and resolve of the end.
I am only the promise.