A sort of bubble – enormous, glinting all the colours there are in its wavering rim; around me. Or something solid, made of wood, with grains like eyes and ridges to ease a thumbnail along without thinking. A deep space under the earth, damp, half-lit, messy where I whisper things to you and you only smile; dip down into it, into you, seven times a day, just in between things. A complicated, clever, worldly mechanism, made of all the things I don’t understand; the relief that someone else is those things and I can watch. Mostly, the voice, which doesn’t change, and the gentleness of it, the quiet tones, the breath, pulls me from my stomach, jolts me, leans me in. Sometimes, stray words that buzz around between us and repeat themselves in places and things. The pressing. The heat. The sleep. The distance, so I can do things. The closeness, so I can be calm. A ready gaze, ready for changing, for mine; the seeing all things and knowing there’ll be more. The new life of your yeses. Sometimes I think I am bigger than I am meant to be, and growing bigger and bigger, and am taller than the earth. But made of fog and droplets. You can catch them, and water yourself with me, and other things too; be my size in different form, some other element; something certain and hot and your own. The hold, so I can dissolve, reform, forget everything after all. The space, in a smile, in an eye; the flashes which come from the ending to the beginning; the middle, which is where I am.