At first it looks like a dance, the two of us

bombus, a swarm delirious with body heat.

In the bedroom we are hidden from the city –

an emerald set into the harbour,

a flawed, crystalline knuckle duster.
It's spring. The air is saturated with flowers

as jasmine punches stars to carpet the porch.

Love, this is desire. The wind rips at the pines

and you slip a hand beneath my skirt, casually

as if opening a letter that time's read down

to a thin, fragile grain, pressed and kept

in the inside pocket of your blue, corduroy jacket.

You know all about aerodynamics –

you say both people and bees fall

in love but neither should be able to fly.

                                                       Our story ends differently –

his fine abdomen pops and vibrates,

trying to escape between the curtain and glass

he is a clock stuck

on cuckoo,

a syllable that, when repeated, is swallowed.

He is yellow and black, we are the colour

of freshly soaked oatmeal, the outline of our bodies like atoms,

are a fuzzy idea – the movement of our bodies atomic,

all bumbling sweetness. When you open the window

we are transformed – he into a black hole

in the sky and you and I – well it all happened so quickly

this life,

a second sloughed away into dust that ignites like sulphur

in the late afternoon light as you sprawl

on the mattress and tell me of a childhood

carnival – the Ferris wheel, a smoking motor,

suspended in a yawning cage where, from the top

the city skidded into the night.

You said you'd never know yourself

from that distance.