You’re Norway in November as you skate

          on the kitchen floor while the dishwasher

licks the plates with suds. I can’t read the symbols
          you’ve scrawled on your arm but want to practice

the language of cracking delph on sideboards

          and sit with you afterwards to admire the blue and white

mosaics beneath our feet. I will track down the potter
          that shaped these wares and into his soft clays slip

words of countenance. But I must watch this Svalbard
          seed, preserved by you, flower in the pit

of every winter. How it blooms through the fjords
          you’ve carved with an old breadknife.

And you’re Spain in May, paddling in a broth
          of star anise and lavender.

Your alphabet turns chemical like the ant’s; you use
          pheromones for words to spell out ‘home’

in the sea’s broken crockery. You walk across plazas in Cadiz,
          shredding petals of aulaga, and steal oranges

from courtyards in Seville. You make marmalade

          with crescents of peel to spread on our morning toast.

It will be better, you promise, than the jar of Chivers
          that sits in our press at home.

And in October, when I return with a plastic bag full
          of too-late blackberries and half-dead ants—

you will flatten their crowns
         
 with panes of gelatine, to freeze the sour of the season.