The ideal temperature for sleep
is around eighteen degrees.
Your hands are warmer than that.
Pad over the lip of the sliding door.
A bird hurls into an inset of the gutter
shuffles around up there in the roof slats.
An invitation to watch brown
leaves, mulch, shift.
Wind architects the balcony,
presses the railings, lifts under the ferns.
And responsive, they burble like the hem
of my skirt from this morning
when the neighbour waved us down.
We were in sight of the window. She peered
at us. I kissed you.
Her screen door still cracked, now.
This breeze is your three-part exhale
running liquid up your ribs.
You are right that she’s just lonely.
Then a wheeze, breaking static.
An engine, many engines on another side of the city.
A voice in Spanish; downy, hushed.
The floor below. I don’t know anyone
who rides a motorcycle here. Cold start.
The fumes grey then alabaster, I imagine.
Slow night hoping that others are awake.
The view back behind me,
clotheshorse spread open,
our clothes as jewellery, whites, dry and creaky.
A palette. I turn, cramping feet.
Holly Loveday is a poet who lives between Hackney, Tipperary, and Victoria, BC. Holly's poetry draws on issues of class, social mobility, and cultural alienation with respect to her joint upbringing. She recently completed her MFA at the University of Victoria on unceded Songhees, Lekwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ land.
the Tuesday poem is
curated by rob mclennan
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