If you’re English, like me, there’s a good chance that openly telling someone in your life why you love them can feel tricky to do.

But give me the chance to hide behind a poem, I will pour my heart out about all the personal, minute details that make them special.

Here are 5 examples (from my book 56 People I’ve Never Met) of me doing just that.

***

Zookeeper

You start the day with the eyes that chose your first goldfish, a smile as long as a slipper’s opening, the feet of a puppy on laminate flooring. Your clean shirt is stiff with excitement for a day of sweat and penguin breath, there’s no time to hibernate when gentrified jungle cats need brunch. When asked if you’re scared, you think about the hand of an ex-colleague. Morning handsome, you lie to a giraffe and skip lunch to count the chimps like school kids on a school trip who never understood you.

Barbara

Barbara’s chickens get fed once a day: an empty Greek yogurt pot worth of grain and the odd cabbage from a family member. Barbara’s chickens peck my boots but not my running trainers and they have the face of a soap opera hard man. To me, Barbara is a square lawn and a bible in the kitchen. Her muscles are dotted throughout the road digging up her weeds, cleaning her windows, updating the street’s WhatsApp. Barbara’s bones are collected in a hospital, resting.

The Landlord

You have the posture of a sergeant major, the pace of a pensioner crossing the road. Your right elbow has a dent from leaning in your listening pose. You are Chief. You are Gov. You are Boss. You are a lifesaver. Every time the door swings open, the pages of your phonebook memory flick with ease. Your mouth rests in the shape of Usual? Your day has no morning, noon or night. You have the face of a thousand Christmas card lists. Your ears are laptop chargers. You are the warmth of a baby grow. You are a figure skater across slippery floorboards, the soundtrack of fingerprint-smeared quiz machines, the polisher of see-through goblets for the royalty your customers are treated like.

Penelope

I can see your black and white stripped leggings, flamingo-pink wellington boots, blue and red and green and orange and brown and purple puffer jacket with worn out elbows and near frosted fingers poking out of the sleeves and the lightening yellow headband sitting in electric mess hair above a dirt-painted forehead and tooth-paste-stained chin. The way your Mum is screaming your name, out of sight, at the other end of the park makes me think you’re loved.

Painter / Decorator

You are four floors down across the road from my new flat smearing grey paint on a building with a wooden front. Your torso looks as full as a black bag on bin day, your spine is a step ladder, your trousers look like an exploded kaleidoscope. I can’t hear what you’re whistling, but your smile is a banana. Your too-tight Mickey Mouse t-shirt tells me you have at least one child. Without hesitation, your arm traces the shape of an invisible rainbow with a pace, defying its precision. I imagine asking you questions and you saying, Not to worry, it shouldn’t be a problem.

***

If you’d like to celebrate the details that make someone special in your life, get in touch for a poem today.