BELOW ZERO

I talk through layers of flesh and know it doesn’t matter what I’ve said, but that you hear me and understand me better than words can manage. I measure you out in centimetres and the weights of vegetables like cauliflower. Another three months before the world will grant you that fixed moment of zero, and begin its own measurements in hours, days, and then weeks. But for six months now we’ve slept in a bed together, and I’ve known you in seismic movements only my careful palm can detect. Or there’s that swelling in my mind in the evenings where my own love began as a kind of bruise. There is this way that you have hit me without a touch. The secret kicks and punches when there’s no other way to talk.