Please don’t send me home from Ikea
I want to stay here in the light
And live in my dreamy cool kitchen
With everything working just right.
Where the whispering drawers glide so softly
Beneath worktops that stretch out of sight.
Please don’t send me home from Ikea
Oh let me stay here in the glow.
My husband is blond and athletic
Like me - though his spectacles show
He’s also quite witty and clever,
His name, maybe, Bjorn - or Sven,
And under our modern art duvet
We do it again and again.
And we’ll never decide just to sleep in our bed
Or watch the box set of The Killing instead.
Oh let me stay here in the glow.
Please don’t send me home from Ikea
Please let me stay here in this scene
Where our colourful boisterous children
Their hair sweetly tousled, but clean
Sleep safe in their pirate-themed bedrooms
A tasteful yet heart-warming sight
A few wooden toys on the shelving
All lit by a Nordic night light.
And not one limbless Barbie, no half-eaten sweet,
And no scattered Lego bites into your feet.
Oh let me stay here in this scene.
Please don’t send me home from Ikea
Where everything’s happy and bright,
Our friends are all coming to dinner
The kitchen’s transformed for the night,
We are feasting on meatballs and herring
With everything matching and white
And we never stay in with a quick takeaway
And put off our party to ‘some other day’.
Oh let me be happy and bright.
Please don’t send me home from Ikea
To the car park and concrete, and rain,
And the hernia lifting the flat-packs
And the wordless instructions, and pain,
And the screws that won’t fit, or are missing
And the swearing ‘God, never again!’
Don’t make me go home in the darkness
To the stare of the cold Allen key.
Please let me stay here in Ikea
With the Ikea version of me.