the fugue state

She has been lost in a fantasy
of horses running across furrowed fields
                riding her out to the sea,
clinging to a muddied mane
                thighs gripped naked around a belly
thinning               starved                 but still his gallop
        is like the wind

I  kneel in sand
waves breaking across my back
already I feel the salt stinging
wounds believed heeled,
 I cannot see my own spine
resent looking over my shoulder
in states of hyper vigilance

I dream of chasing myself
                across deserts searching for water
only to wake with a mouth full of
frogs climbing over each other
sliding down my throat
                coating it with secretions

I have tired pushing six fingers
from two hands inside
in an effort to remove them
but end only with blooded fingers
chewed to bone and nail.

And she says,
                shall I get you something
to take away the taste



                Twenty five years I have been waiting
for someone to offer to prize them out,
only to realise they cannot
do more than bear witness
to the unravelling of them
from my tongue.

I have an obsession with sharps,
pieces of broken glass
collecting them
                tucking them away
just in case
                just in case
I do not wake from the fugue state.