on our London love

Your things look so fine

taking up the space next to mine

in this purgatory we've made ours.

We co-habit quite contently,

(mostly)

lining the shelves with our possessions;

photo frames gathering lived-in apathy and dust,

the box sets of classic hardback books that we’ll never have time to read.

Against the skirting board leans your guitar with no strings

and your skateboard with the broken back wheel.

Your films and my records the only things we touch,

MGMT and oh baby that Electric Feel.
A city-scape of empty wine bottles on the windowsill
with the pitiful sunlight glinting through
washes our room in shades of green;
our Atlantis
(lost to the world, and even to us)

We thought once that it might be romantic.

Our little slice of limbo.

Tiny transient flat;

London,

lonely.

One night you got drunk and used my lipstick

to write our names on the wall;

your scrawling, greedy hands

reminding me that this place belonged to us.

(as if I could forget)

Now the romance is dead and we still live on,

no blinds on the windows or sheets on the bed,

doors held open with yellowed copies of books re-read too many times.
We learn and re-learn the topography of each other,
trying to rediscover our wanderlust, to no avail. Now, we’d rather find ourselves

in the bottom of vodka bottles

than in each other.

And yet, I wouldn't want to drink myself into oblivion with anyone but you,

or anywhere but here.


-g.m

____________________________________________________________
some context:

I've never shared a flat in London with anybody but I wrote a poem about it anyway.

much love

x