There have been plenty of times when I had to fight for my life.

Sometimes it was for my “health and safety”,

sometimes for happiness.

I fought for what I could not bear to lose,

but I lost all the same. I can still recall the taste of all

those defeats, as bitter as unripe plums.

His hands smell of anemone and mushrooms

on a spring morning.

The sea is flat as he is silent.

He’s a man who deals with silence and water, with

the weight of the stones in his pockets.