Anticipation

For Sam and Emma

(1:58 am)

It’s always the same nightmare;
a swarm of white envelopes
flapping in my face like angry doves!

Their pale, papery mouths
open to reveal the verdict –
it slithers out like a blackened tongue …

Grades! Grades!
The envelopes shriek at the irony
that a poet should be afraid of letters.

Still they dribble out
a spindly, inked alphabet –
and the elusive ‘A’s stay hidden within!

But what do these harbingers herald;
good news or bad?

Now – no longer a nightmare, but reality;
I’m warming an envelope in my hands…