Then you came running like a season in reverse. Flowers in your mouth. Standing on a rock. Inside a waterfall. There was a script but we were method-acting. Like Pete Doherty and Carl Barat at their last gig. High on contradictions. Waiting for the bus to leave. Throwing mid-air punches. Stored in a freezer and then snapped in half. Wasting time writing poems when the seasons were draining out of our mouths. Your trembling lips. Your hair in the miraculous sunlight at Bulguksa. That day we thought had turned black. Walking along the huge levees, hoping for a sign. The dried river banks. The ice forming on our memories. Factory towns. Horizontal snow. Alone with your thoughts and your motion sickness. How I wanted to be right there. Days that didn’t need speech. Nights that were held together by a single touch, a falling gesture. Fallen world, why do we remain here? Scintillation and lasers. This glacial fear of drowning in air. The sorrowful willows eradicated from the banks of the rehabilitated stream. Red spray-paint marks on the angel of death’s to-do list. When you see the child a person once was in a gesture, a smile, a protruding lip. That was sunshine in your world. Flame-thrown into mine. Laden with our several possessions, your determined styles. Frames. Pictures I will never see again. Smiles. Miles of silence between us now. Oceans of gesture. To lose.
