I knew I'd meet you

Something in the way she moves

I've still the ring you gave me one day in Leicester Square
twisting on my finger, an anxious rabbits-foot charm to
ward off the full-forward doubts pressing out my brow
There is this place, where you and I and everyone we've lost lived once,
a kind of greyed-out sleeting paradise where I played in snow
and got shit-faced terror drunk and slid baggies of
high white knights under tables in Music Theatre bars, filed with starlets and
queens and curious boys with lyrical memories and then there are
quiet Southern sunsets and Oliver and sadness and spag-bol hearths to take care of me
I'm sorry it's been so long between poems, I've been -
pre-occupied with rebuilding a kind of triumph here as if to fill in for those
slate-grey early days that seemed to me more the best of this little self than any other
and I miss them, and I miss you friend but I've some oh so adventurous delights here now, broad-patterned and bright, they're the new victory, she lying here now, her hand gently on my stomach (where no one gets to touch) and as she breathes so do I, oh so do I and so I stay