I wash these thin hands
In the light of your absence.
The day is alien to me,
Without you.
The eternity of the sky
Seems like a fraction
For all my deep-held silences.
I feel unwell,
But too aware to have gone mad,
But on the edge,
Peaking down
Upon it,
My toes over
the crumbling edge.
Love has kept me safe.
Even with the fights, the accusations
The running into the night,
Practicing dying with every scream,
Because without it,
We would with outstretched hands
Slump below a moon
Lonelier than an empty street.
But that is dramatic,
We would survive,
Take other paths
But our souls? Essence? Character?
So entwined like trees growing
In and out of each other;
Something, if not everything would break.
You will return,
But knowing how much I rely on you
Terrifies me.
David Hay was inspired to write after discovering the Romantics, particularly Keats and Shelley, as well as the works of Woolf and Kerouac. He has currently been accepted for publication in Dreich, Abridged, Acumen, The Honest Ulsterman, The Dawntreader, The Babel Tower Notice Board Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Lake, Selcouth Station, Green Ink Poetry, Dodging the Rain, Seventh Quarry and Expat-Press among others. His debut publication is the Brexit-inspired prose-poem Doctor Lazarus published by Alien Buddha Press 2021.
