Taking Breakfast Alone
Pass me a Digestive, darling –
if you were here you could feed the cats
and me. I’m halfway through a soft-boiled egg,
half-full of tea, in need of something
sweet. Every day I might come close
to death and not know it and so I go on
eating without urgency and releasing crumbs
like rainfall on my sheets, as if time
won’t come to an end here in Hackney
while you’re away. But I might drown
in bed and biscuits in the height and heat
of the day. I might slip as I run to answer
the doorbell and it’ll be the postman’s fault
I’m not quite fulfilled, waiting
for your postcard, or Samuel Beckett
from an internet bookseller. Maybe I’ll recline
in the crumbs like a river and let them
find their level around me, just as you lounge
on sand somewhere, I expect, and listen
to the sea. Or are you downstairs?
I hear you slicing toast and cursing.
But you are way up in Denver. I am deranged
with sugar. Men are cutting up the road
outside my window, swearing at the sun.