various bird calls, a type of missive

it's hard of course, not to lie here and think of you. 

The woodcock just passed over, a regular visitor to my summer evenings in this magical (muddy) realm I think you called it. I remember a reply to a poem you sent me, you thought me overly exuberant or somesuch. i think you were just showing off, always so busy being cool. 

i never cared quite as much for that guy, who appeared from time to time, as if he was who i wanted. 

he added to the thrill, don't get me wrong, that ego dude, he's all part of the same cacophony of chemistry that winds me up even now tonight, i don't know how many weeks later, months now I suppose. 

I type, thinking of a night a year ago, I was watching the swallows overhead, crying and overjoyed that you would send me poetry.

it's loud tonight, a blackbird, the aforementioned woodcock, a chiffchaff, i just released a toad into the garden who has been patiently waiting in a bucket all day where he obviously fled, searching for a drip of water in the heat of the middle of this baked day, a magpie, a thrush, the mellow blush of evening is coming down peach and lilac, i've got a little stick of fresh crushed lavender behind my right ear, right where i wish your lips were.

do you miss me?

i just want to tell you things. 

sometimes I think i might be able to survive on that, just a tiny dry opportunity to tell you what's been going on and to just simply imagine gazing into those deep dark eyes. 

it's the longing that's haunting. 

The want so deep to be touched by you, consumed by you, gazed upon, filled, flipped over and felt up by you.

really, never again? 

tell me you don't mean that.

i see mirages of you, broken men of Surrey, triathlon Dads with their fade-blonde wives all exhausted and bitter and lost, patiently attending their anxious children, gazing into the middle distance on groyne after groyne of Eastbourne beach. 

Every one my heart skipped a beat, was it you was it her was it you was it her. 

The repetition not lost on me, but, you seemed, different, I'm sure you were. 

You wanted to take off the mask you said. 

I wanted to see that. 

I hope I do.