Passing Ships

Illustrated by Maja Kobylak.

On the street people blow past each other like leaves

and I pause to feel their wind on my face.

An accidental brush blooms bruisingly on my arm.

When I get home I watch a film

and find myself shocked at the illicit intimacy

of breath on breath and faces nude.

I call a friend and touch their smile through

a cold mimesis and on the news

I see a grandmother hug her grandchild through

a plastic sheet, and her face is a drowned woman’s

breaking through the sheen of water’s surface.

I see lost faces disembodied

in care-home windows, framed like surrealist art,

and the loneliness of a fleeting

floating hand, pale, moving like an echo

of goodbye. I watch my own

hands move in front of me, and without a

tethering touch they drift lightly.

I slowly force my fingertips together.

Here is the church, Here is the steeple -

I open the doors but I can’t find the people.

At dinner, I am jealous of how my spoon cradles my fork.

Before I go to bed I wander along invisible strings

and excavate strangers’ lives on Instagram

to check that other people still exist and,

lastly, I look at your picture on my mantlepiece

and I hold you

curled in the chamber of my heart.

In my dream I trace the wet line of your eye

and follow a crinkled map of memoried laughter.

In my dream I stroke my finger down your cheek

and leave my own line of love

to sink into your skin.