A Real Poem

In a Care Home, where my auntie’s dying,

the carpet’s red and orange, colours warm.

I have to be so careful – what I say,

the way I glance – or auntie, desperate, swoops

like a hawk ‘Why look like that?’, ‘Take

that smirk off your face!’ and, trapped by my gills

in falsehood, censure, fault; memory drops, blood pounds

and I get it, why, her tiny room is warm.