Once there was three. “I don’t want to hear that,”
you said. Now there’s two. Lucy’s “Karen’s dead,”

gave me pause. For a year we shared a flat
and I slept betwixt them in our big bed …

except when Karen stayed out at the pub
or the club. Lucy from Leeds. Karen from

Kingston. A year full of big beat and dub
and, “Tottenham sheet.” Sex was the maelstrom

that Poe warned us of. Lust that, “unnerves strings.”
Love drug’s thrall. But you didn’t want to fuck

stranglings. You weren’t bi. You just left. You said
I think about kink too much … and fuckings …

and cum. True. Sex is chaos. Love amok.
Holy fuck with three now two, with one dead.