GUEST

She’d spent the night on a precipice,
washed quilts in shallow shivers.
Cold breaths on a contoured nape,
hairs prickling with the lick of each fresh draft.
Iced feet trod her liver-back,
like an eskimo masseuse,
barefoot, fresh from the sea.
She’d invited sleep but
her phone flashed awake again
and again, a mobile lighthouse beaming
through the dark, in flickered
stream of binary alerts,
Ten 0 one, eleven eleven, one ten,
prising sticky eyelids
open, to check and recheck.
At five 0 five, with the dawn chorus
the cacophony finally took rest,
sleep tucked in behind her,
like a real friend and welcomed guest.