The Architect’s Couple

Their plates are croissant-crumbed, and now she’s bored
with sitting on this balcony, coffee
grown cold and the metal chairs harder.

She would have added cushions but the brief
was steel/glass/minimal (‘your perfect life’)
and every polished surface sharply drawn.

If she leans on the rail, leaving her partner
browsing a blank screen, the wind twists her hair
hissing ‘carefree’ and ‘easy’, and her bones

ache in the chill funnelled between high-rise
and the river. She thinks: coat, a knot of scarves,
wool. Not a fluttery shirt hinting at see-through.

The twiggy trees below will never grow leaves
enough to make litter. Later, as per contract,
they must stroll improbably long-legged

among others, their kind, cool and shadowless.
It won’t rain. The brief insists on sunlight, stippled
with all the confidence of settled weather.

D. A. Prince

If you have any thoughts on this poem,  D. A. Prince  would be pleased to hear them.