This morning I wake into a room without
heat and the branches of a tree quivering
on glass. The hands of an extinct creature
appear to have come back to
the ransacked kingdom.
Here, I’m emperor of blankets and sheets.
I hear the stove tapping a rumour of heat
in the other room.
I go to it, fill it with wood, sit, and I listen.
I wait for it to say to me,
you can be naked again