Fact or Fiction
Mornings, I scroll through the news on my phone;
I like to know the world still exists before leaving
the house. Though today, I don’t want to read
about how Europe is on fire and the ice caps
are melting, I just don’t have capacity anymore.
Instead I shall put my head in a book,
a huge 19th century classic with sentences
so long that I forget their beginnings and pages
and pages describing a woman making a fire
early one morning, before she receives the letter
that changes the course of her life forever.
Once her secret is out, she must flee from London
hoping to find help from the one she once loved.
A ping from my phone marks the arrival
of the day’s first email: the world still wants.
But I am staying here; with my heroine, in a carriage
rattling through a storm towards uncertain futures.