Spoil

The birch twigs of your hair
fold clouds around telegraph poles.
Your metal trigger clicks
the chambers of my gun mouth, silent.
The bullets it hugs are chiselled
from pressed daffodils, 
gathered by a wolf with gummy mouth
and ink-stamp eyes;
a shrugging misfit of felt-tip pens.

Your arms, when they move, 
are carving the air into ghostly fillets.
Your cat cradles, meanwhile, persuade insects 
into mailboxes, until my postman,
a part-time art student,
holds a net over my mouth
and gathers them
like a ball of molten daylight and boiled sweets.
He flattens it into panels
and rebuilds the house in my torso.

At the end of the day, when the sun,
sick with heat, climbs from his tent
to stir powdered egg into warm mud,
you peel keen buds from hogweed for ears;

while I wait for news of the postcard I sent.
It was made from ice.
I doubt it arrived.