blink once, think twice

after-effect (the first monday back)

you stilt my motion

side-eyeing me

unbeknown to careful notions.

Our compass points spin

in the presence of each other

some part I ache

for it to point me to you

but you need this space,

you feeling okay.

When you finally ask about me,

how I am, what I've been doing,

now gone tears and exhales.

The gnarly grip of unease

is now a whisper touch

and up arises neither want or need

just a case of knowing you too, but

flawed equally as me.

With that, I call curtains on the free fall

one day there'll be an encore

a leap that's got me more unwieldy.

I've got plenty an inhibition,

self-protection, to stay alive;

yet I took a blind sky-dive

without a parachute

and simply, after all that,

"I respect you"

– and for my long-thought 'wasted-time'

for flash-frozen, fruitless affections

of a few feigned gestures

fallen fast and expired at last –

there's an unhurried sense of becoming.

Original: 5th January 2019, revised 7th, finalised 26th