I’d give you my address if I had one

You like to think you know why

I look out from the corner table, drink in

Conversation, inhabit elation

With a slight flick of the wrist.

My throat never moves

As the beer tips

And my eyes freeze, close, freeze

I am the pulse you leave

In another year. Like the paint dried

Over what your said was a tear-stain

On your bedpost

The rented accommodation, the half-made

Array  of promises, the cries in the dark.

Everyone feels alive clutching glass

Rather than sheets, you can feel the knife

Your touch has become.

I have lost the time

And the offer

Of walking me home

Enters your voice.

It sounds deliberate

Like the risk I entertain

As the strangers witness

My slow discomposure.

I have lived in these thoughts

Longer than I can remember

Watched the exhibitions of gentry

As my fingers go up in smoke

Will be crossed

In the dark street later

I grab your hand

Beginning to laugh –

For this is my home

This unfeeling mask

Are we  escaping and hiding a similar process?

Under the eyes of a streetcar

We are bound to confession

I would give you my address if I had one

And you learn the lesson

Looking at your hand afterwards

And seeing only tissue.