Please can I have a man who wears corduroy.

Please can I have a man

who knows the names of 100 different roses;

who doesn’t mind my absent-minded rabbits

wandering in and out

as if they own the place,

who makes me creamy curries from fresh lemon-grass,

who walks like Belmondo in A Bout de Souffle;

who sticks all my carefully-selected postcards –

sent from exotic cities

he doesn’t expect to come with me to,

but would if I asked, which I will do –

with nobody else’s, up on his bedroom wall,

starting with Ivy, the Famous Diving Pig,

whose picture, in action, I bought ten copies of;

who talks like Belmondo too, with lips as smooth

and tightly-packed as chocolate-coated

(melting chocolate) peony buds;

who knows that piling himself stubbornly on top of me

like a duvet stuffed with library books and shopping-bags

is all too easy: please can I have a man

who is not prepared to do that.

Who is not prepared to say I’m ‘pretty’ either.

Who, when I come trotting in from the bathroom

like a squealing freshly-scrubbed piglet

that likes nothing better than a binge

of being affectionate and undisciplined and uncomplicated,

opens his arms like a trough for me to dive into.

SELIMA HILL