and on the days when I miss you / the night is blanked black / all I have to keep me company are the not-quite-strangers performing their selves online / no stars / so strange that I know their favourite sex toy and their grandmother’s maiden name / to misunderstand laughter / and no notion of their faces animated by words /  are they satellites / we collide mouths from a distance / I am there but not really / honey, cooled by winter, stuck to the plastic /  I remember the way your hair avoided the parting and just flopped over your face / you read the poem aloud in the translated French / a lift-off / to be kissed by curls / tonight the moon stands as absence / cobbled by tenderness / and I slaughter myself to remake one memory

– SK Grout