Leaves

Autumn is a crime scene,
another sheaf torn from
your book of days;
your crisp apple raped by worms.
A psychopath hits a long lunar note each night,
sharpens his knife for winter.

Autumn is a crime scene;
every leaf foretells your death,
shouts ‘You, you, you, shall someday fall,
to lie desiccated,
your heart a conch of jerky
and black mud,
your finger bones the spoils of fights
dragged away through clotted earth
like sacks of loot.
Spiders’ webs in your cheeks.
Skull of cocoons and chrysalides’

Autumn is a crime scene.
A beautiful young wife,
escaping alone on a railway platform - 
we flash past, tearing up a dodman of leaves
at the precise moment her cells begin to spoil.
Her baby blue dress will one day be
a mile beneath the sea floor
divorced from sunlight,
waiting for somebody
else’s spring to begin.

Autumn is a crime scene.
My body disagrees, tells me over and over 
that I can carry an ocean
in my cupped hands forever.
My body says ‘She isn’t dead,
only sleeping. Go,
go wake her with a kiss’.