It arrives for your birthday, without any gift.

It has the face of a candle-flame,
little flickering incisors
chewing at the hem of a sleeve.

A guest, you have no choice but to serve it
boiled eggs for breakfast, pots of tea.

Afternoons spent sketching in the garden,
weeding the erratic zinnias.

Night is what you come to fear.

Pacing, muttering, unexplained thumps
as of books crashing to the floor
in the empty room beneath the stairs.

When the walls dissolve between dream
and waking there is nothing
to do but open the door and stride

barefoot into a utopia of freshly fallen snow.