All day we lived with the thought of you,
celeriac remoulade and Boeuf Bourguignon
covered our plates as we lifted two glasses
of sun and toasted your name. Later
we wandered down Tottenham Court Road,
stopping for love seats and dining room chairs.
We sat on sofas and questioned the depth
of shelves. We measured rugs with our feet
and imagined them here and there. We mustn’t
get carried away, I said, revolving slowly
around an occasional table. In Heal’s café
we turned retrograde, talking about the house
again, the rooms downstairs, how they take the sun,
their double aspect smiles. The Japanese print
and the Lalique bowl – frosty like a moon.
Whether to keep it or whether to sell it, and what
of all this beauty, if you’re not here to live in it.
(previously published in 154, the Live Cannon anthology responding to Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets)
Miranda Peake is a London based poet and artist. Her poems have been published in Magma, The Rialto, Bare Fiction, Banshee, Poetry News and in the Live Canon 154 anthology. In 2014 her poem ‘Florence’ won the Mslexia Poetry Competition and she has this year been shortlisted for Primers Volume 2. Twitter: @mirandapeake
andotherpoems.com 