I think you are returning, cell by cell.
At night, sometimes, I note the air arrange
itself the way it would when you entered
a room, the floor boards stirring at
your unseen tread, the house exhaling.
Dark thickens and I sense you winding,
winding, its fibres tight, making a rope
to reach me, stretching yourself across
its molecules, to gift me with a breath,
a dream, a shadow of your shape.
You’re learning tricks for bridging time
and distance. You heat me with your eyes
when mine are closed though, when the lids fly up,
there’s nothing of you except a footprint
hollowing the carpet, some disarray
among the bed covers. This morning,
I opened a book and found a hair
between the pages, dark like yours, and my
heart wrenched itself free and moved around my body,
the way that only you can make it move.
My limbs are marked with violet-coloured bruises
like little blossoms the size of fingertips.
You send me messages in newspapers
and in the way leaves fall, the calls of birds.
My spit is thickened with the taste of you.
Kitty is one of the two winners of the Indigo Dreams Pamphlet Prize 2016 and her debut pamphlet, Seal Wife, was published in September 2017.
Foxglove Journal 