Portent
By Rachel Long
I feel middle class when I'm in love.
I think it's all the poached eggs on bird-seed bread,
staying up all night on Zoopla—imagine
waking under cottage beams,
the laughter in a garden. Kids.
A little boy with gold hair
keeps standing in my dreams.
I read somewhere that it takes three hundred years,
about thirteen generations, to change your social class.
I think about this whilst having a fag-I'm-quitting,
head against the doorbell—it's broken
but sometimes, after My Love has left for work,
after his hand- held shower, and a pee
in the gaffer-taped loo, I hear it
ringing and ringing.
Copyright Credit: Rachel Long, "Portent" from My Darling From the Lions. Copyright © 2021 by Rachel Long. Reprinted by permission of Tin House Books.
Source: My Darling from the Lions (Tin House Books, 2021)