Only Forwards

Slept-in lefthand mouth crease - I

prefer facing you -

lends, finally leaves texture to the face

that life is catching up with, so

life adding texture to a face, 

now in conversation with life.

A face can say much or as little

of you as you want 

and it only adds texture to itself.

I want to sever my mind 

from mine 

as my mind

has been round much longer 

than my face. It's about

time I recognised it. 

I have a t-shirt about being 50

that I bought 15 years ago and

it was almost black then,

gone charcoal since, so perhaps it 

will speak to my hair and

also my dandruff won't show as much.

I'm looking out the window now -

we had the deck done two years ago

that's what I see -

crisp lines of the patio that will

shift as the tree roots do their best

to suck and grow from the

meltwaters filtering through

as the squirrels scatter seeds

and fuck as well

I see some red in the tails of my 

forebears

how did they get here.

I see you, squirrels,

and I swore that was all I saw,

but now I promise 

that I think only of you now, squirrels,

because we got the deck done.

Deck done, cracks appear

and reappear. 

Doom-scrolling Yelp

gaining ground,

imperial or metric,

the child holds the tape measure,

twirls it in the street,

that bed's got to go,

he's sprawling out.

Only forwards.