The carriage driver laughed at your English gloves.

It was summer—you could tell by the foxes,

slips of red like invention. They made me think

of irregular verbs—you, kneading the cold

from your knuckles and declining out-loud.

Each word a swerve, a shock. To cut. To fall.

To eat. It is summer, you wrote in copper ink.

We were there for research. Thunder churned

and curdled the sky. You bought boiled sweets

using obscure coins in a roadside shop,

and made alliterative notes about taste—

cut click clove clot. We stayed with those

who would have us. The thinly plastered house,

the tree swollen with crop. The castle, nervous

at night, its chimney tightened to a throat,

wailing like a child struggling against a nightmare.

I tried on red cloaks from strangers’ wardrobes,

a private thaw. At dinner we sat at variable distances.

I pictured a scrawl of blood cast backwards

through cloud. I laid my hand, palm-down,

on the wood-cut print of the poisoned lover,

scrubbing at her eyes. I laid my hand, gentle,

on the forehead of the stuffed roe deer.

Hunt heat hang hook. Your eyes, like cutlery.

An antique chair jolted backwards. Once,

you wrote, a great tyrant fell from this very roof,

his cloak gaping like a mouth. It is summer,

you wrote. Someone cried for brandy. Someone

suggested a show of strength. An ancient accent

strolled through the syllables of ‘bullseye—’

you translated every movement of tongue

and teeth. I hauled arrows from the target

by the roots, like a brute; bought a shuddery bicycle

and retraced steps. You noted the area’s edible

mushrooms. The red one with white spots

looked like an incarnation. You knocked 

it against my mouth. An old cut on my bottom lip

snagged and sung. You bought white rabbits

from a wounded ex-soldier, and he lifted

them from a sack like a magician,

fingers between thinned ribs. You spoke

to strangers. Someone’s heroic but formidable

deceased uncle graced a portrait in the great hall,

graced our bedroom window, hobbling

on a broken leg and his eyes blue like porcelain

and dirt under his nails. Dawn deep dread

drink. Allow me to be honest. We’d wanted

to clench our teeth round the chapel since we saw it,

sloppy with ivy, toothsome. I remember. 

Dawn, gutted between the shutters. A barrel

of red apples foamed with rot. They said it was summer,

but when I found you beside the fox in the garden,

its body was already senseless, and its heart already cold.