The heat comes down through the morning and still locked, 

I am unable to stir from sleep’s lack. I cannot 

undo the hours I left one leg outside the shadowy reach 

of the sycamore tree. With my friend, I splurge time 

day-drinking alcohol the flavour of sugar-water 

and she says: When you don’t belong to destiny, 

you pay in remnants and shade. 

It takes me some moments to digest.

Everyone wants to buy into the system 

where they are happy, because they won 

money or kudos or The One. The problem then becomes 

all the other pieces on the checkerboard 

turn into mice. 6.4 million watch the YouTube guru 

sketch the process of sucking fat from the face. 

Once they’ve reached potential, stains appear 

on the ground like tiny grey ghosts. 

My friend calls freckles kisses from heaven, 

or proof that you have lived, but, as I get older, 

these multiply until I know them, like I know pollution 

or fizzy malbec or chemical peel, yet can’t explain 

why the body malfunctions. Skin, a city I have left behind, 

border crossings razor smiles, space held 

with regret. Hiraeth. Deeply retained, like my cells flake, 

I scrape and scrape this stone to scale 

the perfect sentence, thinking about how in the future 

human bodies will trip galaxies, skin flawed 

or flawless, or will it matter if bodies are

disrupted clean outside the matrix.