Here we are, just you and I,

ten storeys above street level, after midnight.

Above us, the dark unfocused gleams of office windows

blur drowsily together, like a sleepy dog’s eyelids.

Below, the city hums softly to itself,

like an air-conditioner on the edge of hearing,

and the glow of streetlamps and shopfronts –

orange and pink as an artificial dawn –

floats, misty, up to us. But here,

in this rooftop garden where we sit and hold each other,

an easy darkness prevails:

no harsh lamps surround us, glare at us,

order us through megaphones to come out with our hands up;

and it’s here we’ll fold that darkness like a comfortable old coat

to make a pillow for our heads, beneath the towers and the sky,

and shadows will find, on our faces before sleep,

a sudden instant of beauty.

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