elbow over my face my skin smelt of Russian amber red as wartime in a dream where I’m crying over tea in Odessa and have we not darling wept in thousand tea shops in multitudes of Odessa’s my mouth tasted of ash I once licked off my best friends’ forehead my thumb marks verses in a book where strangers meet at a well and all lives change as I turn and turn through the positions of sleep ice-climber, yearner, log, soldier, starfish.