Magic is in the word Pho

My twenty-two-year-old feet let them slip.
Open-toe stilettos drop down, heel to tiled floor.
They click like snooker balls, red on white.

I fumble for the slack, push its chin down,
roll an eye back ‘til the number blinks, a dial tone,
birdsong-esque, tightens the string, pushing tin

and signals stretch down the drive, skim the corner,
bouncing over the Stretton hills, straight through
the Shropshire border, reaching you earlier. Nuzzled,

calm in your pocket, my intent rattles like a cicada.
Where you spoon cellophane-noodle soup,
sat at some dusty food stall on Hang Bac Street.

Where waterboys walk over Yellow river, tiptoe across
waking buffalos and their fathers, farmers
walk stilt bridges grasping hulks of paddy grass.

My phone: the ventriloquist, holds a voice hours in front of us,
eating breakfast, and you, part of the act, take the name
of it p-h-o, cover your mouth with a napkin, tap the bowl

with a chopstick and make sounds we’ve never known
just like you did each time you opened my mouth
closed a word in, that came out in six ways, like ribbon.