screen time
I’m touching the wine stains on the dining table,
each imperfect circle tells me a different story,
many open, almost rings, purple as bruises;
indelible tales echoing between hickory
and my skin. I put down my glass,
pick up the phone and I delete
your location from my
weather app.
*
travel diary, Iceland, September 2023
I walked between raindrops,
gulped mist from the waterfalls,
bones carrying the sad weight
of my soaked heart. I longed for
peace from the drinks that birth
time, and I watched waves wiping
the vast darkness of coarse sand.
I tried to make my tears disappear
inside the echoes of the caves,
drenched myself in the fair songs
of hot springs, gazing upon night
skies, black as liquorice, filling up
with stars. I left two things behind:
a gift from you and a part of me. I
saw the northern lights, another life.
*
Luís Costa (he/they) is a queer poet featured in Visual Verse, Stone of Madness, Queerlings, Inksounds, Farside Review, FEED, Roi Fainéant, many worl(d)s and Boats Against The Current. His debut pamphlet Two Dying Lovers Holding a Cat was published by Fourteen Poems in 2023. He holds a PhD from Goldsmiths and lives in London with the ghost of his cat Pierożek. You can find him on Twitter @captainiberia
