Last year we

bought bags of kindling
and coal at the corner shop,
lit a fire in the black unguarded range,
then daren’t leave
when the embers rolled across the kitchen floor;
cooked leeks in butter,
bathed by candlelight while talking to each other
from the downstairs bathroom
through the open kitchen door;
had a second fridge for beer,
fairy lights round the mantelpiece for most of the year.
You slept on a mattress,
laundered your shirts
Friday evening and hung them on the iron frame,
made toast every day when you came in from work.
I waited, stood at night
watching both ends of the back lane
from our back gate;
passed out in a yellow room
we joked would be good for my disposition:
it wasn’t; smoked, drank both bottles of last year’s sloe gin
on the sly, wrote nothing.