While you spend this morning dimly lit by faux Victorian lamps,
you think about the world outside and what may be happening
as if your imagination can extend to marvellous, indefinite things
and not the mundanity of council tax bills and lettuce leaves,
you wonder whether there is any middle ground between the two,
perhaps a small amount, a place where people can meet to exchange
their hospital receipts for a dragon’s egg, notwithstanding the degree of difficulty
for either endeavour, because you’re not to prejudge a situation
no matter how much you lean against the fence, you might be falling
or just waiting for a lover or a neighbour or an enemy, that might
become a friend, who is wearing dark vermillion Wellington boots, caked in mud,
as if to advertise their expertise at cross-country adventure,
which perhaps gives you an inkling of their admirable qualities,
rather than their politics or religion or class, and that interpretation
can be the backbone of life or it can be a frivolity, despite your efforts
to mask your identity, while you eat dragon’s egg omelette,
the sparkling quality of the yoke most delightful and most invigorating,
enough that you are able to enact peace treaties over boundaries
and broken hearts
SK Grout grew up in New Zealand, has lived in Germany and now splits her time as best she can between London and Auckland. She is the author of the micro chapbook “to be female is to be interrogated” (2018, the poetry annals). Her work also appears in Crannóg, Landfall, The Interpreter’s House, Banshee Lit, Parentheses Journal and elsewhere. Wanderlust, eco-living, social justice, queer love stories, and writing remain priorities of her life. These topics fill most of her twittering at @indeskidge.
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