By Olivia Petrini
in the morning I know myself best
my shoulders light and sliding
from the iridescent walls
stretching limbs to trace the
embossed red contours of the map
and you, across the way.
we could criss-cross, you know.
collide, the embryonic scavenger,
tiny neanderthal with a mallet
in one hand,
a stone grasped tightly in the other
staggers over flints like a rock-hopper
to the tangled white arms
which glint up from the sea.
I untangle myself from your embrace
to clamber over the slick roof tiles
and perch at the peripheries
senseless by the lazy messes
of the afternoon.
we advance along the beach
the sunlight bleaching our eyes
a civil orange, rolled between
both palms you cast into the
sky and back again with a
thud
which might once have been a moon
now scatters the bully-rooks
loose from their briar
up into black trees
and once again we retire to
the shadowed nooks of the night.