Outside my bedroom window is a huge cedar.

To write its branches look like furry claws
in the blue-black light is not reaching far enough.

I intended to write about the art gallery in Berlin
where handcuffs hung from the ceiling.
Sometimes to mention something is enough.

I wanted to put my wrists into the handcuffs,
have them locked by the attendant
masquerading as a jailer.
The minimum time was half an hour.
I didn’t find out the maximum.

It felt inconsiderate to make my friend,
whose flat I was staying in, wait.
He had no interest in interacting with the architecture.
I wondered if the experience would incite terror
or an insight I might write about.
No doubt I would have become an exhibit.
I’d watched a young man with shiny black hair
sway thoughtfully on his chains.

My friend and I spent the next half hour
in the gallery café eating mormor cake –
marbled yellow and chocolate sponge
with no chocolate flavour.
Sometimes when my son was young,
I felt chained to the house,
especially when he was unwell, and unable to go to school.
Twelve half-hours in the house
checking on him, feeding him, hanging around.
Chained is the wrong word. Linked perhaps?
When he was better, and back at school,
I would go out to a cafe and eat cake,
but I would think about him.

Just as I am thinking about
those empty handcuffs.
Who is wearing them now?
We all have an infinite
number of ways
to construct handcuffs –
we offer our wrists,
and trust the jailer
with a key
for a limited period.
Or we eat another slice
of mormor cake.
I remain in bed
thinking about the best way
to describe the cedar
in the blue-black light.
What would it be like
to sway
from
its furry
claws?