from "Fixtures and Fittings," by Sarah Salway

“...The eternal whispering of the kettle

would have kept us awake if our beds had let us
sleep, duvets rapunzelling out of windows, but still
the oven and the fridge carried on their terrible dance,

gleaming metal against metal, souvenir magnets
of theme parks clashing with haiku fragments
and handwritten notes. So long as we carried on

shopping we felt safe, our arms lengthening
with the weight of all those bags, until it stopped,
suddenly, one day, a truce made somewhere...”

—from “Fixtures and Fittings," by Sarah Salway, published in Poetry Wales