Hands touching hands, knuckles protrude, my wrist is smaller than yours, your fingers longer.

Lined and crisp elbows fold up to deep pools, yours full of fluffy dark hair, mine lined with stubble from shaving, and beneath one, the oval cyst that I can move about with my fingers.

The skin on the back of my arms is raised in bumps, dry from scrubbing. Yours are full of ink, ink that will be there until the day you die. Each dot links to another, they form lines and shapes, tessellating across your chest.

Ribs line up, leading down your torso, and mine. Past them is the place where we were once connected to our mothers. Where our smaller, less formed selves linked to another human being, and curled up inside their bodies, we got ready to use ours.

It was one of those days, grey stretched out in the sky like empty paper, there was a mist in the morning and it created a mist in my head that just wouldn't lift.

It was raining, but it was rain you can't hear landing on the roof. Instead you can see it resting on plants and droplets hang in wait beneath railings, ready to drop, drop, drip.

I took the bus to meet you at the train station, your stomach was bulging, I think you were 8 months along. I had a coffee and you some juice, you folded napkins into flower shapes and I pulled out some chalk to colour them red.

When it was time, I found the envelope full of notes and slotted it into that book about evolution you lent me and passed it across the table. You stepped onto the train and a friendly man lifted your suitcase into the storage space whilst you waved and waved.

Raincoats rustle, eyes water, light in the dark.

Tall, boney, weeping,
Swaying to and fro in the wind.

Losing wet leaves to the pavement,
Green,red, orange, yellow.

Crisp, regal, overpowering,
They fill the skyline.

They tower over us,
Yet start life in the ground below us.

Roots meet soil,
Worms and birds' nests.

Kites lodged in,
Cat crawl, paint.

Delicate, wispy and dreaming,
Connecting, rumbling and breathing.