Cavers​

 

Sometimes I’m afraid I’ll sleep longer & longer each day
          that my window with the light will shrink to a thumbnail
          and I when I wake I will be underground                                 with the eyeless newts
and the fish slim and limp as severed fingers

Now it’s late and I’m on my phone     reading about caving disasters
        the hellhole drops     and one-way slides down birth canals
the floods and forks and bodies     that pile up retrieving bodies
so narrow, so winding, so fucked

Keep Going, you said
and I kept                                Wedged between two ribcages of rocks,
          inhaling tighter & tighter

Listen: the first time I touched a man’s lips
was in a cave that has now collapsed
          I don’t need your horror stories
          we have nothing to prove

My friend, I’d rather see you in the daylight again
I’d rather we both got out