By Luís Costa
It’s late, the room tastes like weed and cherry bubble-gum.
I lay awake. Refreshed and sweetened by your watermelon
tongue. Bodies dissipate as petrichor, chests dew-speckled
stone. Wait, I haven’t showed you how birds return home
yet. I cast shadows with my hands. They could be holding
your hips too, austere pillars of smoke. Stay another hour,
we’ll pretend the light is always on, we can divide by zero,
swallows have nested for spring. You could sink in mother-
-Mary-blue, cold cotton sheets. Become starlings banishing
rust, slow sorrow, shame. Tomorrow I’ll wash the bedding,
weave a veil to hide the guilt. Mourning your lips drinking
me all through the night, your fingers sailing deadly waves
within my hair. You pull me closer, I will push away, scrub
pillowcases clean. I must mask your soft musk. It’s morning
now, and in this haunting quietude, I beg you to come back.
Luís Costa (he/they) is a queer poet featured in Visual Verse, Stone of Madness, Queerlings, Inksounds, Farside Review, FEED, Roi Fainéant, many worl(d)s and Boats Against The Current. His debut pamphlet ‘Two Dying Lovers Holding a Cat’ was published by Fourteen Poems in 2023. He holds a PhD from Goldsmiths and lives in London with the ghost of his cat Pierożek. You can find him on Twitter @captainiberia
