Incoming: Screenshots

1

Where are you?
I am by the bar waiting
Drinking a wine
Not slipping down
the throat but painful
Does this mean
I am not ready?
To be a meeter
of women in bars?

Running late, sorry!
Will be five minutes!

I am waiting
To be amazed by
all the most usual things:
The fall of your hair,
Lashes,
Your repertoire of laughs.

Where are you sorry?
I can’t see you?
Oh the bar you said
Never mind I see you
I am coming
for you

2
We begin with an
exchange of bios.

Yours is a caravan of fruit.
I once nightmared upon opening
documentation that
it was written in emoji.
But
Such fears are foolish as
This is the language
We love in now.

First Step:
Expand the sample size!
(the sample size was not sufficient)

This is love among the slowly-rising
waters:
you paw at the pane
until you meet your match.
although of course the idea of single that
is being submerged slowly too.

3

Commingling in these contactless times:

Fumble with the

Home

Hone in on
the

Button

Of your jeans

No one is thinking about genes I promise
Though that pregnant colleague said she
was the fifth Tinder bride on her fitting day

4

I bought you a toothbrush 
I left it in the cupboard
Over the sink.

I want you in my bed
Every night of the week.

5

Incoming call

Accept?                                      Decline?

6
We are coming in this cloister
The colour of mint ice cream,
Its background the
supermarket stationery
For girls who have
not yet figured out how
To put finger to clit.

In this mint chip distance which
Yawns between us, I am thinking
Of sleeping with you,

 

How we lie like curved things
Which slot.

7
There is a bluntness
These bubbles allow
About which everyone is always
exclaiming
Post-Snowden sex is
Characterised by
A devil-may-care
Erotic apathy
the sleep tracker most downloaded,
which lurks beneath.

Sometimes when we do this,
When I slide into thinking of you,
My cock can rise to meet
The flashing of my phone.
you were with me at 4am, foggy.
beaming into me
With your rainbow ribs

I am the woman who walks by your side. I
gather this ceremony into my arms like an
animal.

8

In the hot place
with the white houses i watched you
cut into the incongruous chapels of
tomatoes,
pare out their hearts and wipe the seeds
into your hair.
I held you as you came shaking
into the cricket-throbbing night.

we ate wine-dark cherries
and stared at the by-turns bottle-coloured
sea.
Singing came to us like flotsam from
further down the town.
While we ate calamari you asked me what
I missed about home.I said only good
public transportation, and that I had
expected to see more apricots here.

9

When Penelope recognises the face of
her husband

Stephanie Sy-Quia August 2018
it is written
she is as a man seeing his homeshore for
the first time
having been too long at sea.
You are where the waves of me are
headed.

in this white hot town
the rocks are at a slant to the sea.

There are many middle-aged couples on
this island.
I like to see their sun-weathered skin
spilling out of bikinis, the way they pick the
flesh of fish off the bone and the muscle
with which they squeeze lemons.

10

In the first flush of desire
I salivated at your self-imaging
then, later, I let it go sour,
as if you hadn’t taken down the listing or
were still trimming
the hedge that lined your escape route.

The full stop is the most potent thing we
have in this age without puncture
a time with no rites
only swipes
and the all-opening thumb.

11

Hey cutie!
How is the vacation going?
I haven’t heard from you in days.

It’s great! We are being v wholesome.
Swam in the sea
Ate paella with clams
Tried the sticky custard
Native to these parts
Walked on the beach
Under thunder
Thought about you naked
Thought about you not at all.

12

Stephanie Sy-Quia August 2018

I have screenshots of all the most
Romantic things you
Said to me.
I read them when I want to
Cry.
*this is an admission of a failing.

In the weeks after
we came asunder
I listened to bad songs with good guitar
parts

i can still smell you on my sheets

you are slovenly and
should wash those.

the morning after
the last time
your kisses came off like
snail scum under the hot
shower.

your semen globbed out whole
once the weekend came around.
.

13

Are you sure you would like to delete this

contact?

14

I love you like
A bike loves WD-40.
Like the burger loves the
lone slice of pickle.
Like the moon loves the sea.

 

Report as spam?

Undo?

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[this message has been deleted]

15

Hey!

It’s been a while!
How have you been?

Sorry, who is this?

 

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