I take you skating on thick ice.
This grey gym-slip skirt
I am wearing is far too short
now my face looks like this
but I like the distance
from its hem to my boots.
Tuck your trousers in to yours.
Forget the talk-bubble
floating like a scone back there
in the sky, it’s far too far
back for us to see
what we say.
*
I can’t help myself skipping
from box to box
of this strip we’re in,
avoiding the lines
as if anything could go wrong now—
no cracks in my marriage
and yours is already broken.
You walk steadily beside me
with my suitcase balanced
on your head.
These are the lines
I say instead.
*
You take me walking
alongside the canal
where the black water
is an oil portrait of the sky
and you, and I. Me—
it is me that I see
and would usually say.
What we don’t do is stay
although you point out all
the spots along the way
where you, not I,
could stop another day.
*
We don’t stop in Hyde Park,
we are the only people
walking upright here,
looking down on the English
sleeping to the left and right
of us, in the dry grass.
You take me to see
the Albert Memorial
with its subjugated peoples
around the base.
I told you I would google it
when I got back.
*
Interior: your sister’s house.
You are the gilded Albert
but we prefer to talk
amongst ourselves
these days, slapping
our oval speech bubbles
into the air like wallpaper,
the thought bubbles
that rise up past you
from the book you’re reading
trapped underneath.
We can smooth them out.
*
We should wear boiler suits.
These metal canisters
on our backs are heavy,
we should stop carrying them
around, we should just light
them and take off—
There isn’t a cloud in the sky
except for the jet-trails
floating behind all those people
clutching their cold cutlery,
wearing their headsets,
sitting so upright up there.