If You’re Alone

Touch your skin, and notice
the freckles on your wrist, and the gaps
where your veins move like water.
You used to think that freckles
were pin marks left by injections
in your sleep that made you dream.
And those trees that reached out
for you, and those scratches
on your stomach weren’t just a coincidence.
The dirt and blood under your nails,
and the fossilised leaves of your palms
are dry like your lips.
Lick them but don’t swallow your teeth,
each one is a bone icicle, hanging
from the window of your mouth.
Watch your breath form ovals
in the air like the haloes of angels, and
breathe in the linen talcum powder
as it blesses the grass;
make wing marks in the snow
with your fingers and let your cheeks
turn the pinkness of the sky.
You always wake up to the colour white.
You are not alone.

November 2013

What inspired me: The ethereal quality of skin and winter and the way you can never be alone when there is air in your lungs and cold on your cheeks.