Shelter

The room is dim, but for 
a thin trickle of light that leaks
through the gap in the door,
and the blue-black of the sky, 
pressing its warm belly against the window.
So fat, no black could squeeze through.

I hear, outside, the rain in its dance. 
Toppled from a cloud, prancing now
along the roof. The sound swells 
up a comfort in me, and I feel safe. 

Curling into the moment, like a crab 
into a shell, safe from the ache 
and drag of the current,
I allow myself to think 
of you, and am taken a long way
by the seas of the mind.

©Day.J.R.Mattar

11 O’clock Love

It’s 11 o’clock
you said you would be home
at 9.

My fingers twist  
over each other, searching,
blindly, for the 
tips of your own.

The feeling  
agitates me, so I transfer 
the energy
onto my phone.

Rubbing my thumb  
along its smooth back, anxious.
I hope the moment will jolt you 
into existence, like a spell

or a charm; it doesn’t. I send the moon
out to look for you, my white spy.
She returns with no news, her hands
do not bend around corners.

I imagine you with someone,  
biting their skin, instead of mine.
I imagine you drinking, or dead,
your head smudged into the side of a road.

It has been one day, a day without
your touch, your smell. Your fume
leaping down my throat, suffocating 
in a good way. My body

gnarls and twitches 
for you. I forgive myself
of your request not to smoke
in the house, and begin

to light up, as I notice
love reflecting in the mirror.
Your large figure,
bending over me.

©Day.J.R.Mattar

Splice

I pass through the yellow spill  
of street lamps, on my way for
cigarettes. The light drips over
my face, until I am wet with it.

With each passing, long shapes  
expel from my body, 
throw themselves to the floor.
I recognise the peculiar shape,

the elongated roundness  
of my head, as it slips across
the concrete, like moving water.
The shadow looks like me,

but moves with a grace  
that I seem to lack,
with my awkward bobbing
shoulders, and the scraping

of my shoes. I begin to think  
of the shadow as an extension
of me. Perhaps something 
I have lost, cannot retrieve.

or see, without the intrusion   
of light in absolute dark.
A perfect thing. Maybe it writes
better than I do, with more precision

and an eye, unclouded by love
or dislike. And then
I think of you, and your shape
and your own misty eye, how I fell

a long way into its colour, and 
struggle now, to get back out.
How this figure, that has been stretched
from my body, cloaked

by the night of the mind,  
no light there to notice
its movements, follows me
on my walks for cigarettes.

How it reminds me   
of our splice, and the desires
that split me 
in two.

©Day.J.R.Mattar