Waters of Leith

Your voice was already inside,
picturing winters to come with the confiding agent
from the vantage of a summer evening –
the small garden for a white cat to lie in,
low-ceilinged rooms with slopes of snow or sun,
a black, chuntering stove.
                                   I saw obstacles at every turn,
the box room blocked with boxes, a widower’s
kitchen, the bathless bathroom. A mattress filled
the office, while the bedroom fit only a desk –

a scene of things displaced, made nightmarishly large,
and below just bare geometries, a floorplan
to plot out acts of carelessness. Here we’d only be exposed,
or else dismiss the evidence, string trinkets
from inexplicably placed picture hooks,
like orphaned aspirations …
                                   What’s there to know?
Beyond the unlatched gate, rushing like a road,
we both heard the fast, forgetful river, metres away.