In the black of white paws
After he’d done his business,
we headed back upstairs.
You, me and the small white dog.
The stairwell seemed so ancient
in contrast to our shiny newness.
I noticed ammonite fossils
adorning the steps like paisley,
whilst lasagne-layered paint
drip-dressed the ore of the handrail
as we skirted the well ritualistically.
Our bodies floated up
through the floors like a stairlift
as I traced the brillo-braille of the old wall
searching for words I didn’t need,
while the small white dog raced ahead,
jumping two paws at a time,
tugging you away from me.
I tugged you back.
To stop all this.
To stop the moving of parts that cannot speak
– a call from the ancient deep.
You looked at me confused at first,
so I tugged you again for clarity.
The small white dog sat and pawsed,
eyeing us with a tilt of his head.
I tilted mine and leaned in for a kiss.
Just then, the stair-light tripped with a flick.
We dropped into vantablack
with a splash.
You, me and the small white dog.
Yet we carried on kissing
as if nothing had happened,
the darkness quickly pouring into us
like two empty, dirty glasses.
We became senseless,
in the sense that we were one sense less,
our kisses overcompensating
until they became a desperate
exchange of oxygen.
Our bubbles blowing into one another
like Champagne,
leading tipsy minds to stray
to the forbidden places,
where light rarely gets in.
My fingertips drooled like Pavlov’s dog,
as our hips bunched up against the wall
and the stairwell filled with the sound of
panting and whimpering,
but the small white dog remained silent
for a change.
Touch is sight, I thought to myself,
as I lifted your skirt
and you unbuttoned my flies,
our salty depths coming up for air
with the promise of bright lights.
In this blissful blindness,
we became perfect
and all-seeing,
as the greys that exist between us
became lost in the black
of that white-hot pause,
when a small white dog waited patiently
in the dark
for our fumblings to cease.
©2021 @thebloodofthesethings All rights reserved.
I’m a middle-aged-Londoner-Brexit-refugee residing in Lyon, France.
Poetry is currently just a hobby that I fit in around other things, but it has become an important creative/therapeutic outlet for me.
I simply want to write poetry I’ve not seen before. Devoid of cliché. I prefer to write about two things at once because it forces me to use words in unusual and unexpected ways.
All my poetry is published on Instagram: @thebloodofthesethings
