Portent

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.