Five Days

There are five days - I counted them:
(this part is very quiet & still)

There are: feathers falling behind my eyelids, again.
a small child in a blue coat
a hole approximately the size of a fist opening here, above the left eyebrow, and flesh, and bone reforming like molten metal, behind this fist.
a searing pain located about three inches above the top of my head
four small plastic bags, a bottle that once contained milk now contains petrol.
And I have no idea how to touch you, or how to not touch you.

At a party, you show me how to climb up the wall and wait there just below the ceiling, invisible. You tell me about a kind of spider that weaves a ball of web at the end of a thread and scents it with fake moth pheromones. It waits somewhere high up with it's lure dangling, until some amorous moth tries to get with it. The moth gets caught up in the sticky fibre and the spider reels it in.
"How long can you stay like this?" I ask.
"I dunno - " you reply,
"Days?"
Someone walks beneath us, they don't look up.

I find you in the garden stuffed into the tiny gap between the compost bin and the fence,plucking at your bandages. They're unravelling around you like sorry streamers or some disintegrating shroud. I'm trying to gather you up somehow but the confined space and your complete lack of co-operation make this impossible. I'm holding you at the wrists,still raw and shiny like skinned rabbits beneath the shreds of bandages. Your eyes are very bright and unfocused. You thrash about some and kick me a few times, in the jaw and somewhere else.There is soil in your hair and you give off this aroma like a sick animal. I keep hold of you until you give up and lay back limp and empty. You seem to fall asleep after a while, there's some subtle change in the nature of your breathing. I cover you with my coat and rest my head against your back.

In the car park, by the far side of a bottle bank, some man is fucking me.
"Take your coat off" he keeps saying, more or less insistently. He's trying to push his hand up the back of my clothes, looking for some skin I guess. I pull my hood over my head. You sit on the top of the metal box, moving your feet - sort of rhythmically. I try and work out what music you might be listening to from the pattern of your foot movements. I'm breathing close against the metal, and this breath smells of petrol

I watch you negotiate the hazardous journey from the door to the mattress, one hand vaguely sweeps away something in front of you, like mist or cobwebs maybe, scatters a little ash from the cigarette. The other clutches at the waistband of your trousers. There's a bluish and inconstant light from the TV.You weave a little, from side to side, as if these floorboards are the deck of a ship.It seems so epic that I feel like applauding when you finally arrive at this destination. I flutter my hands slightly, they're heavy and hot - that's enough. You pitch yourself onto the mattress and end up horizontal and face down across my middle - so from above we would make this cross of bodies. Large, transparent feathers fall softly from the ceiling and your hipbone is a dull ache in my liver. I'm sleeping or something pretty close and then I'm not. Your hand, with it's fresh bandages makes spirals across my stomach.
And I have no idea how to touch you, or how to not touch you.