Perhaps the best cells are the ones we can’t kill off,

a persistence of the fittest, although mutation’s

always painful. It’s two thousand and fourteen,

and I know no-one who has been

uninjured. It thinks in me,

this shadow. I put on sunscreen, and am surprised

to come in contact with my skin. In the same day,

I’m chatted up in a café

by an aspiring novelist who’s using boldface

and an ugly font, and the woman I pay

to tear the hair out of my legs offers a discount

because my skinny limbs

won’t need much wax. In the same day,

I watch a woman in pink boardshorts

hold out white bread

for a spring-loaded terrier,

an ancient cyclist on City Road with bubble wands

mounted on his handlebars, although they say

this place has gentrified: mutation’s

never simple. I dream my top teeth

splinter, turn to chalkdust in my mouth:

so I am in the world’s gaping jaw.