poppies

• Before you left, I pinned one onto your lapel, crimped petals, spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade of yellow bias binding around your blazer
• Sellotape bandaged around my hand, I rounded up as many white cat hairs as I could, smoothed down your shirt’s upturned collar, steeled the softening of my face.
• I was brave, as I walked with you, to the front door, threw it open, the world overflowing like a treasure chest
• Later a single dove flew from the pear tree, and this is where it has led me, skirting the church yard walls