I get into the car on the way back and want to rest my head on your shoulder and you look at me and smile and offer it so I can lean in and your head falls on mine and I think now maybe I am mad because you are the greatest friend. I close my eyes whilst the car, with all this heat spinning out of it, too much heat, plays music. Its every dark beat fills the hidden but very much there air with energy. And I can see you all are here still, like seeing silhouettes. I sit at the meal and the waiter and we take photographs and he pours our drinks and we can’t make out every word but we are laughing, I can see you smile there and it is good. Every word that used to be a stutter comes out braver now, you all knew me all along. I tell the joke with charisma and when they all laugh it stretches something. We watch sparklers and i hear how he loves you, and what she thinks, and everything about her and who she is and us pulsate in flickers. Everything takes me and i get home and it’s ‘Natalie, come look at the stars tonight’ and we look for ages and you tell me how they are far away and close, how they are past and present, how we see them, so they are. You tell me everyone sees. We move but they stay. I whisper that they are always there. I thought at night maybe everyone’s drunk and I have never been drunk before but I stand dizzy with stars, and taking everything I love with me, play making shapes

She soaked visions

She said with sugarcane strawberry lips, ‘When I am with you my body is alight. It’s like I’m fire. I’m mad for you.’ From then on I saw simply the world lit with moon-beams, swerving across the planet like flashlights, engorging Earth with cellular stars that passed from her to me.