(for Alex)
She is opening tab after tab on her laptop screen
so the one with his name in it gets smaller and smaller,
squeezed down by little pieces of the internet
until he is just three letters in the corner,
a peep of light, the last Tetris block before death.
He said that if her arms had grown really long
for whatever reason he’d have carried them down the street
like a train. He said she reminded him
of a statue in Rome that had him in raptures.
He had a photo of it framed.
What’s the use of trying to be pretty and dreaming
of ridiculous dresses when love is just an apple
being eaten from the inside?
And now she’s tearing up a post-it note and making it rain
bright pink into the bin. Is this what heartbreak feels like –
like rain falling through your head?
All she wants is to see the collection of walking sticks
from Tutankhamun’s tomb. To be in Egypt on the deck of a boat
in a cold pool, completely alone, and fine with it.
In the bath, she rolls over and over.
She stands behind the glass balcony door surveying
the windows of the highrise opposite, the lives behind them.
The lights extinguish one by one, to a gallery of frames
with the paintings stolen, and a walled-in quiet.