Valentine

From the 'Skirrid Hill' collection

The water torture of your heels
emptying before me down that Paris street,
evacuated as the channels of our hearts.

That will be one memory.

The swing of the tassels on your skirt
each step filling out the curve of your hip;
your wet lashes, the loss of everything we’d learnt.

That will be another.

Then later – holding each other on the hotel bed,
like a pair of sunken voyagers
who had thought themselves done for,

only to wake washed up on a shore,
uncertain in their exhaustion,
whether to laugh or weep.

That, my valentine, will be the one I’ll keep.