lingo

When we were on the phone
and I was counting stars 
and I found five of them, 
and your voice was trickling down the line, 
and I didn't want to move from the one,
most sporadically reliable thing I had, 
like the stars, you're always there, 
but you're not always around all the time
and when I looked back
they were gone

When we were half asleep 
and I could feel your breath on my cheek 
it was warm and my cheeks were flushed
and I opened my eyes to you 
and suddenly this was me, stripped down and raw, 
but you were balanced at the edge of unconsciousness, 
so strangely unfamiliar to me
so I just rested my head against yours,
and when the daylight emerged, I was cold, cold, cold.
and so I started to run and look for you,
tapping until my fingers bled, on the locked doors of strangers,
I am out of spare change, i shout at beggars
I board buses and hang on to taxis, I steal bicycles and rickshaws,
I am dancing through dinner parties, I am throwing cutlery in the air, 
I find a circus and I am looking with the brushes and balloons, 
and with a bang, the skies explode and the cans rattle, 
and I find myself spinning in sheets of paint and rain and thunderclaps
and suddenly, there's a loud snap, and all the wild color drains,
and I was just another broken flower garden, crumpled petals and all
Scattered.

When the music was pounding
and I couldn't feel anything,
blinded by noise and wisps of ribbons streaming down,
balancing on one foot and your hand in mine,
I wanted to scream I never want to let go.
But then you consumed the evaporating summer air
and you went off on an adventure,
and I was left here to pick up your letters,
and soggy parcels covered in lipstick marks,
so i say i will only wake to musky incense smoke,
and French pastries, and to your presence
white smoke billowed in great gusts and 
pastries began to rot by the hundred
and I slept for so long I barely recognised being awake,
and everything had crumpled in
so I spent three weeks ironing things out instead.
Waiting.

We are all made up of cells or stardust, 
depending on how you perceive it,
We all go back to the ground or up to the sky 
when our bodies give way, 
depending on how you see,
how we come to be here in the first place. 
Some don't even see the body as ours,
It's just a borrowed, disposable vessel,
that holds the soul down until it tires out.

Well I believe that through some way or another
You are stardust and I am cells 
You are borrowed and I am my own home
And that is why you come and go, 
And I am here, rooted to the ground 
Rusting and creaking and counting the stars in the sky