One day you took my shoulders

Between your hands

And peeled back the years between us

Like orange rind

You geld on tight to the fringes of my collar bone

And set free a tooth

That had been chewing my gum

For weeks

So I could eat a tuna sandwich

One evening I ruled a sunset garden

From a tree you'd climbed further

And the lawn was bristles

And the colour pink sat upon it

Like meringue on a melting cake

We conversed with a girl who'd hung herself

From the neighbours' window boxes

She told us that she ate leaves

So I reached for some sore of freshness

The could leak green upon my tongue

You said she was lying

But she was MY next-door-neighbour-girl

So I made her tell the truth

As she swung from a lapped

Pane of glass

And laughed.

One night our feet tangled

With each others'

Into question marks and commas

That punctured the conversation

Like pellets as we pencilled

Our thoughts on the ceiling

And you spoke to me in nonsense

And I spoke back

Our own language

Chaffed our lips and spilt like wine

From a broken glass -

Onomatopoeically

And we knew what we were saying

Because we'd counted out

Each garbled noise

To mean:

'We're foreigners - you'll never understand.'