Kate Garrett

When you converted to vampirism

you took me with you like a schoolgirl crush

and renamed me in her image. You carried your

halo well—a wisp of cloudlight through the pub

window when you told me I belong in the chapel

of bones, that making a pilgrimage to the town

built on death would suit my medieval fixations.

But with ink held under our tongues like cyanide

– Camus, Pessoa – we hadn’t grown up. Your voice

was a needle skip around a pistol grip, while I cider-

drenched wraiths only I could see. We based ourselves

on bloodstains, never let on we’d sunbleached them to dust;

we never let on these winding sheets were lifted

from a well-mannered airing cupboard, the emperor’s

new shrouds – hiding inside them with hearts that still beat.