Postcard

Good morning, I hope
you are well, and the toast isn’t burnt;
I’m spattered with Mediterranean salt,
just like you promised – easing ink
through the Adriatic and its penny
promises, shining like eyes
on the seabed.
 
I’m crossing waves
with these over-the-counter postcards,
on my way back to you, while Venetian cream
threads a loose skin over my coffee.
If you were here, you’d ask me to remember
drawing faces on maps of the world

as the rain poured lingos through our smiles,
threading tie-dyed kite tails amid the contours
around your lips and eyes (hanging on tight),
and I’d tell you maps don’t have sunsets.
In these hot midnights alone, I gaze
 
over roof-top gardens gone to seed,
with Indian dyes and watercolour reflections
clutching the canals below like embroidery grass,
I spend listening to the lions who guard
each tributary with fevered eyes
 
that teach a lullaby  on the art of living
well into the swill of colours as words
in song, printing them in stone and lining
new words on my lips: caelum, non
animum, mutant, qui trans mare currunt.*
 
My hair is the horizon now,
and it’s pulling at the sellotaped corners
of the universe, undoing your careful origami,
and laying it out on the sky where my words
trace their way back home, on a jet plane
resisting the air.

 *"Caelum, non animum, mutant, qui trans mare currunt." (Those who run off across the sea change their climate but not their mind.) – Horace, Espistles