Fresh Milk
Sometimes you smell like fresh milk
the good stuff no skim
three-point-eight percent
you ask me to swim naked
I think about my body
heavy, sore, broken joints
popped out in places by
rough hands at other times
the cold of the water
the fat kid’s perennial fear
of taking off your shirt
I’ve been dreaming of Islands
of cliffs worn down by salt-wind
that rusts all things in time
of smelling you, after the ocean
salt and fresh milk
white as clean bone
of wide spaces enclosed by water
jutting hills dotted with cottages
horizon broken only
by fragments of earth
I strip off by the water
push my body in
skin petal pink from the shock of the cold
With you
I’m a body at its barest
trying, inch by inch, to introduce itself
to unfamiliar temperatures
Sometimes you smell like fresh dirt
soil and river, slight moss
off your lips
A hint of green, body leaf-trembling
against the water round my neck
Sometimes you smell, like
warm cream
legs around my waist
Suspended by the weight of water
we spin, ballroom dancing in liquid space
until, giddy and tired
from moving through
we emerge, and you smell
like Irish butter, cold and radiant or
the promise of fire that wafts up from
open tobacco pouches
A Semi-Indexed Alphabetised List of Things That Made Me Cry Once I
Regained the Ability to do so
Abandonment issues
Arrogance of man, the
Anxiety, financial
Anxiety, ecological
Anxiety, generalised
Anxiety, social
Bees, endangerment of (see also: Anxiety, ecological)
Being touched unexpectedly
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Caravaggio, paintings by
Crowds
Depression, generalized
Existential despair invoked by a Lidl supermarket, the
Expression of basic emotions unable to be experienced previously
Insomnia, chronic
Memories, intrusive
Music, most
Mushrooms
Otters, existence of
Pain, hangover
Pain, injury
Pain, migraine
Patterns of light like salmon scales cast by late afternoon light through climbing ivy, the
Poetry, most
Seizures
Trauma, generalized
Trauma, specific
Violence, individual
Violence, institutional
Violence, senseless
Words, found
Words, lost
Words, discovered
Zoos