Cleaning house
your face fell out of the pile 
of old notebooks 
that Pisa’s on my desk.
Smiling up 
from a passport photo
you gave me that summer 
we slung coffee together 
on Berwick Street.
I was going into
my second year university.
Stegosauri lumbered 
in the foothills.
And I went mad for 
Country music,
the Master and Margarita
and you.

Of course I ignored 
the Delphic warnings.
All of them.
You getting ready to go 
off and study geography (?)
in September.
The shifting continental plates,
those Richter rumblings 
below my feet.
The growing shadow 
of the asteroid…

All the nights we 
shared that short summer.
One in particular;
a humid weeknight
when we pub crawled 
through Soho.
Did Dean and Denmark streets.
Walked on Old Compton 
interlocked like continents 
before the rift.
Your hand in my 
back jeans pocket, 
mine in yours.

We took a night bus 
north to Turnpike Lane.
You laid your head 
on my shoulder,
I could smell your hair
and feel your warmth against me
and like some rote rom com cliche
I wished that moment would never end.

And then your pale body moonlit 
(or was it streetlight lit?)
by the high window 
of my bedroom 
as it moved on mine,
in that flat on the high road
that I shared with mates,
above the dry cleaners
run by the old Greek
with Uncle Fester eyes.

The picture that fell 
from my notebook,
an offering from 
a distant epoch.
A fossil from an age
when my heart 
beat red and livid
and Africa still 
big-spooned 
South America
and I was only 
a year into
owning my first 
mobile phone,
a Siemens,
and it wasn’t smart 
but stupid.

Was it you made 
me wary of blondes?
Did you know 
that my heart is now 
as callused as 
an old sailor’s heel?
Encased in an 
osseous rind,
the first sclerotic 
layers of which
you helped harden.

Many of the women 
you preceded will say
that you took the part 
they most needed.
The pizza slice-sized piece 
you carried off to university 
in Bristol and never returned,
along with my phone calls,
a copy of the Master and Margarita
and two Emmylou Harris CDs.