Finely balanced

He’s a house of cards, a delicately balanced pyramid
held together by hearing aids and dusty bifocals and
wobbling dentures and ageing pacemaker and
shirt with three buttons missing in action and
tea-stained cardigan with more holes than wool and
21st birthday watch that never stops ticking and
hernia truss and extra large incontinence pants and
braces and belt to support saggy-kneed trousers and
over-stretched socks and ulcer bandage and
triple-E shoes with Velcro straps
and
one trip on the rug he’s been told to throw
in the dustbin, a mix-up with his meds, one jug of
water not touched all day, or one ill-judged lunge
for the walking frame, and the whole lot
will come crashing down on the floral patterned,
wall-to-wall Axminster.

Sarah Boyd is a student on the MA Writing Poetry run by Poetry School and Newcastle University. Her poems have appeared in Frogmore Papers, Dreich, The Cannon’s Mouth and elsewhere. She came second in the 2025 Arts Richmond Poetry Prize.