I set your bones upon the river,

watched them dissolve into an orange sea.

A stranger talked in a whisper

and the foreground moved with them.

Over my shoulder,

loyal and pale and beautiful.

Striking my future and moving between

I and you.

By the time you come home,

there is no phone call waiting for you,

just an empty sea of red where

love promised to be,

ending tragically in a car crash

or to a cancer out of control.

In the backroads,

where little girls go to die

you step through the thickets to whisper -

'Sweet Ophelia,

the painful afternoon

has bled into the T.V.'

The static seeps onto the pale grass

And I stare into an orange sea

waiting for you to return.