I wait in silence for the phone,
and bite my nails right to the bone,
my chest feels hollow as a drum,
my breath quiesced. Why don’t you come?

I cannot speak, nor raise my head,
my desire supressed but far from dead
remains furled up, like secret doves,
hidden, folded in magician’s gloves.

I feel my stomach at its rawest,
my pulse Is faint. I cannot rest.
I hear the tunes from last night songs
but the words now say: ‘Did I do wrong?’.

I taste the perfume of that one
last kiss.  Please. do not end our brief liaison.
Your leaving split and rift my heartwood
and burnt the innocence of childhood.

(This was an exercise in re-using the rhyme words from Auden’s ‘Stop all the clocks’.