"Closing Time. Every New Beginning Comes From Some Other Beginning's End"

This is for someone who needs no introduction.

**

Flexibility can be learned, you see
Reach farther, arch lower, grasp further
Your muscles lead the way, its matter over mind
Elongate the spine, you can touch the sky if you tried
But keep your feet planted, it’s the view from below
that you need to keep in mind, for it’s what you’ll return to in the end

What would you say if I told you my limbs
Were all just extensions of some heartless machine
Churning away in my chest, working indiscriminately
All movements involuntary, driven not by thought
But by precision lacking emotion, by carnal instinct
Is it better for us this way
That I be a function of science rather than romance?

Tell me what you found
When you explored my body like a new jigsaw puzzle
Did you finally piece me together? Was the picture worth the trouble?
The time you took to learn me, to feel me out
So tedious, like a writer proofreading a story that
he didn’t even remember he wrote, with words he doesn’t recognize.
Trying to remember who he was when it poured forth from his pen.
Was it I who inspired you to recreation?

What did you see when you closed your eyes right before the shock?
Stretching and aching for your benefit, you teach me flexibility
I would not have achieved on my own
The night sky is hovering between us like a broad finish line
And my mouth on your neck, silently murmuring your praises
I thought of how this would feel for so long
And the newness of you ignites every nerve ending like a live wire.

Guitar riffs resound in the hollow space between the machine in my chest
And the heart beating somewhere amidst the metal
You shared them with me, I never knew the sound
But now I can’t do without them. They echo and ring all for you
The music you chose, the songs in your head, I want them all
Play them for me, don’t keep them tucked away
My one gift is that I can harmonize with anyone who sings for me

I never had expectations for this, or you
Yet you exceed them all anyway, as you move above me
And light up all my hidden contours, kept in shadows
Even the most deliberate attempt to detach mind and heart
To treat this just as a fix, a double-blind experiment
is abandoned as you catch each of my breaths in your hands
and ease the air back into my body, you’re my iron lung
I never knew I was so intricate until you showed me

The covers are askew, as we fumble through a maze
of limbs and sheets, we meet in the middle
I don’t want to know what it feels like when your skin isn’t upon mine
Or what the air would taste like when you don’t breathe for me
Science and common sense escape me now
The deliberate way I conducted each movement, functions of the machine
They are reborn with foreign influence, I try to name it
But it evades distinction, it transforms reason
And in its place, I find that in spite of my inner structure
of metal and gears and lifeless things
I am helpless in this, and for the first time
I know fear, and hope, and what it means to dream
And as we settle down and sleep, I dream of you

How thin can I stretch before I risk a fatal tear, a mortal wound
You could stitch it together but it risks a scar, so I’d rather you keep me whole
But leave a mark somehow, teach me heartache
Push me, I can handle the bruising. It gives me character
You test me in dizzying ways,
the world moves in waves when you’re near
Our days are numbered and pinpricks of fear remind me
that every touch, though it feels like the first, will be the last
And I’ll be left with insides of melted steel, chaffed beyond recognition
Another story I forgot I wrote, but mine all the same

Though self-preservation keeps me stagnant
If you lead me, I’ll follow you anywhere
I want all of you that fate will offer me
And I’ll give you all of me that I know exists
But I know you, and you’ll find more than I knew was there
All you see is possibility, when all I saw were limits
And as you kiss the parts of me that the tangled sheets reveal,
I know that with you, walls become windows, locks become open doors
And I’ll always know that the written story of my life
Surprising, sometimes foreign, but always mine
was once so beautifully touched by you

So sing of all the places you’ve been
Speak of broken watches and long hair
I’ll touch old scars of yours in wonder and awe
So strange to think there was a time when you didn’t exist to me
or I to you. And I’ll marvel at what’s become of us now
and the chance encounter that first crossed my path with yours
in a dingy van in the wintertime, with a shared destination
As you showed me what it feels like when it’s midnight all the time
The clock stopped, so we’d have a chance to be.

To think that time was so kind to us then,
and mocks us now. How feeble we are in the end
Because with the flutter of an eyelid, mountains crumble
and with a touch, stars fall to the ground.
But I’ll relish every moment, let every touch sink to the bone
and forget nothing, from the moons of your fingernails
to the curve of your jaw. And as you run your fingers down my spine
I’ll reach, arch, grasp, stretch, with my newfound strength
Flexibility beyond my wildest dreams
Of mind and body, heart and soul.
All this and more you taught me, all this I learned from you

Remember me, and the way I raced the traffic
Remember that first meal of mussels, in your fancy coat
Remember the way the bass thudded in our ribs, the guitars that sang
and the lights that flashed, songs I cried along to in your arms
Remember how I jumped at every touch, how I yelped at every jab
and the way we meandered like lost poets through the streets
The maps, the top ups, the arguments and tickets
All serving as proof that London was ours.
And while this city lingers on without me, carry me always
In the watch on your wrist, the sleeve of your leather coat
Feel me, in the smell of rain on pavement
and the hum of streetlamps. And while you still have me,
while we’re lying here with the shades drawn and the window open
Map out my story with me. Guide my pen, write my life
Touch me, hurt me, heal me.
And may every stroke of midnight bring me back to you
so I might once again touch the sky.


- LAP etc.