Do you know what it’s like when a body twice yours 
holds you down in the room where you make your life 

until you wouldn’t know how to move even if he wasn’t 
holding you down and then he splits you further open 

and the world before 

had been filled with its usual losses and rages not this 

what is this do you know 

what it’s like when you live just one door away and every 
time you have to step outside, well no, he’s not there, 

not now, but he could be and the dread is 

everything for years 

even when sometimes there is whisky and sometimes 
there is joy, there is dread in the ficus tree on the landing 

and dread in the weather-beaten flag by the garage 
and dread in the cash inside the mattresses that are always 

moving in and out 

of the building next door and what if people call you 
corny because you still hold onto details like all the gray 

kitten posters on the gray walls of every quakeproof hospital 
you were sent to to escape the dread and yet 

even when they pumped you full of drugs and even when 
they dried you out of them, there was always dread 

and you were 

and you will be 

nose down in every room 
in which you try to make your life?