On the Victoria line I consider my heart
and how I’ve given it, offered it, carved it
out of my chest for you, ready for your
hot soft mouth to swallow it whole
like an oyster or a pill.

When we wake in the mornings sweat-damp,
I’m spooned around you, inside you, and
we exchange our thank you’s as recitation
in a chant-like trance, and you offer your
dreams as I try to reclaim mine.

Imagine us! Trading words like chocolate
coins, holding cards loosely to our chests,
eager to reveal our hands at any moment,
grasping at the scores of half-moon tracks
on your back from my finger-tips. It’s not hard.

On the Victoria line the night is young yet,
and the thumping tissue in my chest is yet
to be scooped out from behind my ribs.
I surrender a poem instead into your steady palm,
which lies open on my thigh, waiting.

Julia Young is a poet who explores the relationship between memory, place and displacement, and the expat experience of a New Zealander living in London. She moved to London in 2019 and works in Learning & Development. Her poetry is unpublished.