Memory

 

The offices merge, and the

dinners and the nights out.

 

Even, embarrassingly, the aunts

and the children of friends.

 

But never the sunrises.

Each one mapped distinctly

across my veins

like a new and still-blossoming love.

 

 

 

Tuck

 

I want to be small.

 

I want to be tucked away

on a narrow crevice

in a coastal cliff

looming over the wild sea.

 

I want to zoom out.

I want to see the birds

as one pulsating mass.

I want to see the outline

of the country.

I want to know where it ends

and that every feeling within

is surrounded by water.

 

I want to zoom out more.

I want to see blue meet green

where the clouds have parted.

 

I don’t even want to know about the moon.

 

I want to zoom out more.

I want a tiny sphere

in a huge black vastness.

 

I want to zoom out more.

I want darkness ever-expanding

and an invisible overarching question-mark.

 

I want to be small.

I want to be smaller.

I want to zoom out.

I want to zoom out more.

 

I want to take a stone

and carve your name

in the dust beneath me.

 

 

 

Window

 

Is he waiting for someone?

 

Has he just got in?

 

Is he drunk?

 

Has he had a nightmare

or heard a strange noise

somewhere in the house?

 

Is he trying to summon the energy

to get to an early shift?

 

These are the questions

I would be asking myself

if I lived across the street from here

and looked through this window

to see me now

at 4am

sitting on the side of my bed

staring at the walls

wondering why I can’t sleep

in the violet angles

of the not-quite-morning.

 

 

 

 

 

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Jared A. Carnie currently lives in Sheffield. His debut novel, Waves, is available now. He can be found at www.jaredacarnie.com.