We drove for 2,000 miles through Arkansas’s storm season.

I barely knew you, but was teething

rebellion, obsessed with metaphorical doorways.

You told me you were a panpsychist, read

passages from a philosophy novel out loud while I

watched red kites circle roadkill. I spent the entire

trip trying to guess your name. You were a martyr

in a past life: you still had the scar, the son

of a cruel nobleman. It hadn’t hurt to die.

You said religion was your reluctant duty;

you kept a box of rosaries and erred

on the side of caution, a jet set Pandora.

In a roadside café, sharing a prawn tandoori,

you said we were nothing short of satire:

you, fork tongued and water-cured,

me, a rabbit’s foot mystic, your deadly liaison –

both of us a parable for the prodigal teenager.

I said you made up for it with piety;

you said the wound inside your chest was a lie,

that you just liked the lights, the ragged splendour.

I thought I’d turn into a miracle by proximity,

like the hare that skipped almost under the tyres,

bulleted to combustion, madcap sunbeam.

Like the cut on your wrist, its shock of red,

your right hand your only natural predator.

I’m not afraid of you, you said. You voice dipped quiet

in prayer, when drunk. You were a creature of reason.

You never said you loved me. I thought of dormancy,

red fish asleep under white ice. My heart, honest and entire.

I didn’t believe in God – you gave him up in solidarity.

We said goodbye at the church door: daredevil unbelievers;

returned sons. You’d never pray again, but I wished like a penitent

over saint’s teeth, jet-lagged between tired devotion, and you.