Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

How could it be – the corridor lining

your classroom, the green wire gate,

the store selling boiler parts – should slip

from the default architecture of your sleep?

You sift through scrolls of blueprints only to find

blocky accented lines, bricks and mortar

like molars overcrowding, your rib gaps widening

to expose a window of vital organ.

Your feet no longer fit your footprints, instead

practise how to redistribute the weight

into each stride, draw a map for all the places

you can stockpile steady pockets of breath.

Chicken bone.              Bus stop.

Pothole.                     Leaf.

The wind crossing your cheeks

will speed up further east.

Ask your seconds to sunbathe.

The pencils in your drawer are ready

to shed their cedar, the post-it notes dream

of their moment, heroic, to prevent milk-less tea.

The traffic lights entertain themselves along the A40,

and next to the acorns, sisters

will plant piano keys, extrapolate

where the tarmac might meet your feet.

So whatever the order of your forward:

back, forth, sideways, pause, forth, back,

for you, a cascade of broken chords

in each translated step.