dyad

Jack Forbes

I moved your mouth over mine
then went to kiss your neck
tasting the salt and the sun on your body
from where we swam only hours ago;
that image of you at the earth’s edge
was still painted the same colour, even now
and within my grasp
your breast like a handful of sand
poured through my fingers
and onto a shore of our own making.
this tangled knot of us a dyad
stark and timeless in holiday hours
squirreled away in secret amongst a swarm
of tourist traffic, grizzly buskers, vaping teenagers
and brazen suburbanites chomping ice-cream cones.
this dyad fixed in the stripes of venetian blinds
fallen to the instinct of pulling and thrust
and the trust between us
remained the one pure thing
orbiting our brainless minds.
we could have built a ladder to the moon.
we could have revolutionised popular music.
we could have time-travelled back to front.
we could have risked traffic on the M1.
we could have started another lockdown.
we could’ve rewritten the dictionary.
we could’ve raised 2-Pac from the dead.
we could’ve unionised Santa’s elves.
we could’ve written a poem about fucking.
we could’ve…
and when it was over, I felt myself
as a sack of angles, some spent equipment
prostrate on a bed that’s just a bed
and you, breathing beside me
in the glow of a brand new colour
the world returning to us
like a radio signal getting stronger
recognising, finally, that dusk always repeats itself
but since its first day on the job
has never twice looked the same.

Jack Forbes is a teacher and writer, based in Melbourne, Australia. As an emerging poet, his work has appeared internationally, including Schoolcraft College’s MacGuffin, the Eunoia Review, AAWP’s Meniscus,  the Purposeful Mayonnaise, and The Suburban Review. He recently completed a debut chapbook of poems entitled 50 on Somerville Road.