Snail Mail

She mistook him for a pillar-box across a January street:
his coat scarlet as holly berries, the brim of her hat

pulled down against horizontal snow. She squinted at him,
distantly, through the passing cars and ice flurries,

and the letter in her mittened hand lurched
with non-sentient urgency. She crossed, and slid

the envelope into his grateful mouth, past unzipped teeth
and against his yielding tongue, where spittle pooled

and blurred her cursive scribbling like watercolour,
wrinkling the virgin white into fingerprint ridges.

He nibbled at her, just once, and licked the damp wool
like a stamp and, for a moment, she wished she were

self-adhesive. As she withdrew, and pressed her hands
to her face; one side still cold, one now warm as breath, he

swallowed, and digested her words to their destination and,
through the clouds of her accelerated breath, she saw

a frost of saliva, glistening its way from lips to chin,
like the trails across her kitchen floor on spring mornings.

Morgaine Merch Lleuad

If you have any comments on this poem,   Morgaine Merch Lleuad would be pleased to hear from you.