by David Hanlon

Obligation: an ocean bubbling & boiling in a kettle.
I make trillions of cups of tea from it,
spend my life boiling & pouring & containing,
then slump & cancel all my plans for the following day.
Spend the evening scrolling the evening
for messages, for contact: my inbox full
of junk with no delete forever button,
the earth a period on a map of our solar system,
my heart: flat as the surface of a map, empty as outer space.

I fold it into an envelope, into the shape of
this yellow horned poppy in my garden:
the one I watch grow & grow &
grow until I taste my own tea, until I remember
that sunlight & rain are love in different forms,
until my hands rest like two seals on a shore,
their nearby ocean my cup of tea: mollified,
& in my summered chest a letter,
a message blooming.

David Hanlon is a poet from Cardiff, Wales. You can find his work in many magazines and journals, including Rust & Moth, The Lumiere Review & trampset. His first full-length collection Dawn’s Incision is available from Icefloe Press. You can follow him on twitter @davidhanlon13 & Instagram @hanlon6944.