Tremors that he gives me confirm that 
the heart is a muscle
as mythical, as magical, as mysterious  
as a stitcher, tailor, clairvoyant, wordsmith
made manifest as a minotaur 
who cares for his brothers
A sage who is fuelled by compassion
Not seduced by illusions of fairweather friends

Even though we often 
stay up late swapping each others poems,
talking about a shared love of physical humour, 
our penchant for spontaneous adventures, 
and Geoffrey Chaucer, 
I’m still too embarrassed 
to ask him how to pronounce his name

Last night, he gave me a lighter and told me I could keep it
Standard looking with no distinguishing features 
unlike the way he carries himself in his lime green trench coat
which seems to consume his whole body
But upon closer inspection,
wrapped around the body of the lighter
the image of a minotaur   Colours of minotaur’s horns and wings bore a strange uncanny resemblance 
to those of the lighter-bearer’s jacket he was wearing at the time 

He took the lighter out of my hands 
and lit my cigarette 
but it was me who was lit

In a single flicker of the minotaur lighter, 
spark like firefly like stitch
Teaching me how to receive
without neither surrendering myself nor compromising my auto-care
for this most mythical, most magical, most mysterious  
of minotaurs 

At the end of the night, 
this minotaur-cum-talisman placed a one penny piece in my right hand 
and told me to keep it safe as it would bring me luck 

Whichever side the penny lands on,  
I was just enjoying smoking with him 

For the first time this year, the next day, I drunk black coffee 
and smoked a few roll ups lit
whilst sitting in the suntrap in the corner of my garden 
The hush, the heat, 
the warm afterglow of midday sun
and puff of each cigarette lit with a minotaur’s lighter 
For the first time,
in a very long time,
I felt lucky,
I felt lit 

My mother passed away just before the Christmas of 2023
Got up one day as normal, did a bit of gardening out the back with Dad and then 
NEE-NAH, NEE-NAH, NEE-NAH
Rushed into hospital that afternoon to have major heart surgery 
Survived, discharged and then dealt the cruellest hand 

2 weeks later, I learnt a new term, ‘rigor mortis’
the breaking down of the body, on the day Mum just passed away in her sleep
Now every time I hear or see something to do with  the heart, I 
flinch

But I will not let my own heart break down, I will carry Mum’s determination to survive with me, fight and stay strong

As I sat in my garden, smoking in the sun trap, and looking forward to 
seeing the minotaur again the following Monday, out of the cigarette ash, I could hear the feint sound of my mother’s voice singing to me, ‘The heart is a muscle, the heart is a muscle’ 

For my heart is a muscle and that muscle is a minotaur
For he, who is the most 
difficult to pronounce, 
is also the most mythical,
most magical, most mysterious,
most lit.