Published in our brand new Future issue, Katie Byford’s delicate little poem looks at love in the present moment. Illustration by Aiste Stancikaite.

Your lashes kissed
the lip of my ear
— a very small thing,
molecular — and you asked
where I would like to be in
five years’ time, as if this were
an eyelash on a thumb.

I said that time hardly ever does
what I tell it to. It has a history
of arguing with my feet,
bends them backwards too often
to trace out plans like these.

But were it not listening in
so jealously, my love,
you must already know
that to be just as we are
with lash on lip of ear
and lashed together

would be the loveliest little plan
my lips could muster up
for five years on from now.

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