Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

Steve Walter

print this page

Washable Ink

At night, I reach from my sleeping bag to touch you
under your duvet. We are not lovers yet.

This is the moment I relive, over and over
just before we first find each other and explore
with our hands, our lips, our skin.

Did we know it would lead to this - the breaking
of our tight embrace,
the unwrapping of limbs - separation?

Raindrops bleed onto the envelope which holds
a brightly coloured card for you, a wild landscape.

I only notice your address is smudged
as the card leaves my hand and falls
through the mouth of the post box.

I stand for a moment remembering,
how surfaces mingle, heartbeats coincide and race,
and how the skin turns dull again, and chills.

Steve Walter was first published in the Literary Review in 1984 and has since won prizes and had work appear in various anthologies including the Kent and Sussex Poetry Society and Poetry South East 2000 He published his Little Book of Poems in 1999. He lives with his family in Tunbridge Wells.

Page(s) 38

Back to top