She hushes herself; fighting back
tears, sighing aloud, speaking
incantations, now steady like despair
for a house with a man inside
who stays, which would stand on a street
scarred with memory and longevity –
like London’s streets on streets – but her own
filled with stories from her ancestry.
She looks at her child asleep in his cot
resolves to forge a home for him; even steal
a path to widen, in which to place cobblestones
or some other rock she can own.