The easiest thing is to open your heart like a beignet

with a reading lamp glow of cream, but lately my life

has been a dull bulb. Belief is simple, but believing 

is a cudgel of another colour. For a while I helped

the lost, people who knew the ultraviolet cruelties, 

who told me at church they had been called darling,

and found surprises hidden throughout their homes, 

before they divided themselves into a council, selling off 

their estate of senses. My god, I became for sighing 

what a stock ticker is for stock. That was before you 

showed me poppies growing from the ruins, where cats 

laid about like abandoned toupees. I remember coming 

home together, the house lit by lightning blinking through 

clouds: a hand offering a hand. It was good, I had been 

waiting for rain. My days are quieter now. I left the oven on 

in a dream some weeks ago, and now I anticipate a fire

igniting the hours I’m awake, which I have learnt is how 

love behaves. I have made no hard decisions, except 

to think how you arrived in my life, appearing on my 

left-hand side, when everyone else chose the right.