The Fourteenth Summer

Crooked little smile
on chapped-cherry lips today;
you sit with me and whisper
something but it’s lost
behind the dawn-damp haze.
You pass two white pills and when I shiver
you nod and place them in my mouth instead,
the glass of water
to my lips
as you cradle my lolling head.
I can
barely think.
Outside the grey-grit city yawns,
is waking up, noises
dragging themselves like dying
beasts, towards some unseen resting place.
The noise, garbled gabbling,
babbling like babies in the street below.
Crushed up cans
that have missed their bins
clatter as they scatter
in the wind recoiling from the path
of dusty cars.
I want them to make sense.
You wait for my eyes to focus,
for me to become aware
again. For me to moan across my parched tongue,
groan rising up from
the agony of omens
which twists in my chest and coils
like a snake in my spine.

I remember that day because the day after was the same.
How old were we? You and I?
Poor little angels we were no longer,
more like demons in disguise.
We lied and lied
to keep ourselves alive.

I don’t call it suffering. I lost my ability
to feel, it’s not impossible.
But my mind, that mine without diamonds,
is filled with red stones which sit in calm array,
lining the walls whilst I
huddle in the middle with eyes unfocused,
groans rising from the hole in my chest.
I am no man.
I will not exist.