Lazing riverside
Summer’s night
Splintered tables
Sticky thighs
Discarded suit jackets
Loosened ties
Abandoned shoes
Delirious eyes
Plastic jugs of booze
Dehydration maximised

Too much cider, too much wine
Collapsing on the Circle line
Starving grass beneath your feet
Grown tired of the city heat
Of fake Ray-Ban glasses
Of skin that peels off in sheets
Of volcanic buses
Of angry #heatwave tweets

I sit here, quietly,
Upon my molten seat
Catching drops of another nosebleed
Stirring my 2 litres of Pimms
Realising that it’s only ever
On days like this
Through the combination of having had
Too much to drink and enough of the heat
That I allow myself to dwell:
On where and who we could be
That I allow myself to imagine:
My God, how happy we’d be
That I allow myself to think:
If only we’d bought that fucking houseboat.