Tonight the wide Parma Violet sky demands
to be written as poetry. Every time
the clouds decide to dress themselves
in matching crushed-lilac outfits
like this, my poor score-keeping body
returns to Highgate Station carpark,
when the cool January afternoon sat
behind a lavender filter & I whispered
something along the lines of I need you
to kiss me like you’ll never see me again
(because when you’re twenty, you believe
your life to be some tragic indie movie)
(because I had it set in my mind to die,
to take my life that night) & you replied,
What the fuck. No. That’s so stupid & refused,
just hugged me weakly & drove away,
left me gutted on the platform, convinced
the world had ended. Did you know then,
under that powdery purple firmament,
that our last kiss had already happened?
That that swift press of our tired lips
over milky tea that morning had been it?
Because I certainly didn’t.
Though perhaps I should’ve —
we got caught in too many sticky webs
spun of other people’s judgement,
got caught in faking sanity & safety only
to be confronted with their opposites.
Our love became just another
crumpled betting slip, nothing won
but broken promises & bitterness;
we had lost the bet we made on ourselves
all those years before. The sky knew
it was over before I’d even admitted it —
the beginnings of a bruise already
aching beyond the train window,
a great mauve promise of apocalypse.
Another new unpublished poem from EX-CETERA. Someone pointed out that I “never write nature poems” so I wrote this in January, inspired by the lilac sky in the photo. Not sure if it qualifies as “a nature poem” though… To understand The Context of this poem, buy a copy of EX-CETERA here.
HLR 