Bed-sharing has its benefits.
After almost thirty years alone,
I felt a fledgling when I first welcomed
you into my nest, but adapting
to an extra body proved easier
than I imagined.

Our muscles moulded into the angles
of intimacy, with you drawn to the furnace
of my belly, of my thighs, my hips,
my back like a blanket, weighted.
You pressed, willing wax, sealing
us together in a drowsy matrimony.

I watched, with a smile, your neolithic
dawn-stagger to the bathroom, hair no longer
Renaissance apostle but wild man maze.
In moments of bottled moonlight,
naked to our waists, you unravelled
the knots in my shoulders, sorcerer, spider.

Now, each morning, you emerge from the depths
of the duvet, kiss me with your bristled seal-face.
When I leave for work, you travel into the warmth
of my sunken shape like a starfish moving across
a tidepool. You absorb what’s left of me,
and I carry you out into the cold of the world.

---

Bex Hainsworth (She/her)
Bex Hainsworth is a bisexual poet and teacher based in Leicester, UK. She won the Collection HQ Prize as part of the East Riding Festival of Words, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Heavy Feather Review, Atrium, Okay Donkey, bath magg, and trampset. Her debut pamphlet of ecopoetry will be published by Black Cat Poetry Press in 2023. Find her on Twitter @PoetBex.