Marital Visit

It´s her visiting time

which presses the pause,

makes you follow me downstairs

and shepherd me out of the door.

I sigh the train South,

unearth my unwanted habits,

remind all my rooms

to smell of me again.

Like the man who threw a party

but didn´t dare touch a drop,

you busy yourself in the tidying,

the rounding up of my scraps.

The ritual begins with the clearing

away of my face; foundation, lipstick,

powder, concealer, the wooden brush

cobwebbed with my unyielding knots.

Everything strewn like toys on the surface

of her kidney-shaped dressing table,

is gathered and bagged

as on the day they had the nerve to arrive.

You empty the shelves of my skin

the eczema ointments, the bottled fake tan,

the perfume you bought on a whim

that patched me in rashes.

Flicked over the edge,

my pieces topple into the dark of the bag,

where they chink together

as if to toast their reunion.

Your wife lets herself in,

carries herself across the threshold,

she smiles at her hallway,

sniffing me everywhere.

Sick Bed

It went as far as the eyes,

stirred something up, stitching them shut.

The morning I woke to the immediate black,

eyelids padlocked, I howled for myself.

The tears had nowhere to go, they stayed put,

dammed up against thin walls of skin.

In the blacked out room, you let

me lie on you again.

You dabbed and circled pink ointment

into the mohair itch of my body,

while I wriggled, sickened

most at being put back in nappies.

You touched my cheek and palms

with the cool plastic of toys,

I heard you in the doorway, watching

with your hand on your hip?

You did the crying for me,

smoking cigarettes in prayer.