Can you feel it? No, really, can you feel it. It’s an intense crushing sensation in the lower abdomen, the silence, the stillness in the living room. Like the brewing of tea, the water gets hotter and hotter, until it reaches boiling point, at which point nothing can stop the steam. Sitting, watching another episode of Archer drag on.

He is content to let his physical problems sink into the sofa, allowing all his being to just turn to mush. She on the other hand, wants to look and to feel tonight, but is still more interested in watching the tv and ignoring her urges. What the, is happening. Stiff like deceased or stuffed bodies awaiting the shift to the cemetery or crematorium. Like a seeping waxy melt on the tip of her tasteless tongue.

‘Never mix whiskey and wizardry.’

‘Never mix love and hate’

Ian Mckellen stuck on the psychiatric ward chanting, “you shall not pass” to anyone who passed by. Stuck in a fantastical movie. As if a clockwork orange had been wrapped around the lion who doesn’t know how to be free anymore. Never mix hate and love, or love with fate.

‘Are you dead already?’

‘You are already dead.’

A chanting rhizome of white intricate structure, coursing its fragile way through perlite and soil. Tis the light it seeks, set free the small nipples of the mushroom stems.

‘Set free the stems of your nipples’

‘Your nipples are like mushroom tips.’

You no longer see a pale faintly recognisable image in the mirror. The woman is the beast. You watch a shadow approach behind, she is now a figure fleeting beside you. But the tv is playing voices and making sense again.

‘I’m on replay, or rewind. I live in the past.’

‘I am leaving.’

Complex the man who cannot find himself. Imaginative the woman who discovers herself. Two souls who entwine, make a universal rhyme. The meeting and the leaving of the world. When the sun peaks at noon, she walks from the door to the seat to the door again. He has his eyes rolling through his skull from dawn to dusk.

‘Like the brewing of my tea.’

‘I see, you want me to leave.’

You are not a stone to me

you are the sun to me

you are a good day to me

you are like a gift to me

you are a white rose to me

I am nothing without thee

I am brave enough to see

what you did for me

and forgiveness can be through actions

so too words

am I like how you expected me to be

please, see it in me

forgive me.