'Slow Thoughts' by David Hay

I wash these thin hands

In the light of your absence.

The day is alien to me,

Without you.

The eternity of the sky

Seems like a fraction

For all my deep-held silences.

I feel unwell,

But too aware to have gone mad,

But on the edge,

Peaking down

Upon it,

My toes over

the crumbling edge.

Love has kept me safe.

Even with the fights, the accusations

The running into the night,

Practicing dying with every scream,

Because without it,

We would with outstretched hands

Slump below a moon

Lonelier than an empty street.

But that is dramatic,

We would survive,

Take other paths

But our souls? Essence? Character?

So entwined like trees growing

In and out of each other;

Something, if not everything would break.

You will return,

But knowing how much I rely on you

Terrifies me.

David Hay was inspired to write after discovering the Romantics, particularly Keats and Shelley, as well as the works of Woolf and Kerouac. He has currently been accepted for publication in Dreich, Abridged, Acumen, The Honest Ulsterman, The Dawntreader, The Babel Tower Notice Board Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Lake, Selcouth Station, Green Ink Poetry, Dodging the Rain, Seventh Quarry and Expat-Press among others. His debut publication is the Brexit-inspired prose-poem Doctor Lazarus published by Alien Buddha Press 2021.