It’s winter
and the radiators make for hot summer bedrooms,
fake heat for a false season,
high humid air in the canopy,
a western, British, Tunisian bazaar.

But outside the window frame into
the rooftop mouth
of chimney teeth and foggy breath,
a pair of speckled starlings,
with deep coffee eyes and rings
of white for plumage decoration,
nest in the wound of this building.

Surely if they migrate,
to warmer climates, past
the Spanish-African gate, they’d
be able to bask in the dawn desert
sun that’ll drift slowly overhead,
raise their young their instead.
I’d like to migrate too,
leave this town for
somewhere new.