every month my computer declares 
my income to a government server
as secretive as a physicist in wartime. 
The world, what has it given me? 
And me, what did I give in return?
I tried to earn the love of my friends, 
strangers in nightclubs, foxes at night. 
The expense of kitten-heeled evenings 
when I hunted sadness like a journalist, 
when I shrank from vulnerability
like a curtain-twitching recluse.
I fantasise about planting tomatoes 
in spring, leaving the fruit with
a note on my neighbours’ doorsteps: 
what has the world given you? 
What will you give in return?


keeps dreams like a pet.
From a high bare branch,
my neighbour’s tuxedo cat
eyes parrots building nests
for spring. Unlike me, Faust
isn’t worried about falling.
The ascent, its precariousness.
A real animal acts on her hunger. 
Meanwhile I am trauma-bonded to 
the present, ignorant of its passing, 
this certainty. She appears unaware of 
failure, the width of its possibility, 
but the birds can see the curvature
of the earth, the weak twinkling of dawn.