Surrender Poem by Oliver Roberts

You would dropp into my mouth like an old bell,
or wind from fire stopping suddenly in a corridor.
It’s along those musky halls that I found you,
your delicate steps measured the stretch of night,
and their rhythm surged me closer towards you.

In our nearness I made myself hollow,
I circled a space in the centre of my estranged soul,
and it was the hum of your liquid suspense that travelled through it.
Bare woman, swelling curl of twilight cloud, you occupied my trembling,
you gripped and cut me because I shed blood as a man,
you loved me with your back arched and saw the rain in my face.

I should have been wiser than to let you do this to me,
the way I allowed you to paint the bed with my shredded restraint,
and how you released your tangled breasts to me like two beggars.
You should have known better than to let me do this to you,
to compose my masculine lines inside your shining creases,
to grasp your breath and hold it shut so that you ached there with me.
We should have known better than to destroy each other like this.