We still have the odd plates we bought when we first moved in,
before the matching dinner set and the Wedding List,
we still have the plastic chip-shop forks
from that first evening
when we sat in the empty living room
on hard-backed second-hand dining chairs,
eating fish and chips from the papers.
When you grumbled about the mismatched wonky plates,
that you wanted everything in our new home
to match, and to be nice, to be just-so,
I pointed out,
these are the plates that we’ll be heartbroken
when they break, years from now
as they were the plates we had
when we first moved in.