Desire was once an uninterrupted afternoon —

tongues lurid from corner-shop sherbet

as we’d run to the lake.              We had nothing

                     in common but the name of our street

and the fleeting adulthood of unsupervised water.
Somewhere between Flowers in the Attic

and One Direction, you started

looking different to me, started
going to the lake on your own

to fish while I oh so Ophelia rehearsed

how I’d drown, making only the most tragic shapes

amongst KFC shipwrecks.
Afternoons weren’t interrupted enough. Instead,

spent willing my phone

to notify me of anything.

In the active bar on Messenger,

a green orb hovered above

your name like the light over

the dock of Tom and Daisy.

                     Tell me, Gatsby, would you believe

                     me if I said Rorschach

                     blotted that bay for you?
Twelve years later,

neither of us live there.

I return and wonder

how in that water, you could see a hand

and I: a mouth.
I know you’ve been back,

fishing rods strapped heterosexually

to the roof of your car,

but your line never caught

the image of me

beneath it.
                     When someone drowns,

                     if they cannot cough up the water,

                     they try to swallow it instead.
I only ever pretended,

but I know how that water would’ve tasted —

like that green orb

or catching a cold in summer:

a salty reminder

that just because it’s sunny,

it doesn’t mean the day warms

for you