We found **** in the den that day
high on gas, giddy at the sight, it was inevitable really
and at half past three, sometime in July,
I slide along the living room wall
wearing chintz paper.

In my room I pirouette as a jewellery box *****,
Regal Kingsize, Butane and crushed grass
radiate like a Glade plugin (essence of rebellion).
Barbie snake eyes me “What have you done?
"Oh My God! You know how much trouble you’ll be in,
you shouldn’t have let this happen”
her voice is glacier planes and a million icicles form in my chest.
I tell her to shut her mouth while swallowing ice
before it melts into a puddle at my feet.

She never spoke again.

Early morning,
houses blink at the light, curtains lift, fall.
As Dads march down garden paths
windows see my hysterical feet fling me outside,
tiptoes, Y shape, appease the eyes
of the white knuckled joiner,
“please come home in a better mood”.
Sign language; I am too young to speak.

The charity shop smells of yesterday's arguments
and the mannequins legs' are slimmer than mine.
She poses ethereal in the window,
wears a skirt I outgrew 2 years ago,
he would be on her if she could part her peachy lips.
I look beyond, hidden, watch
while he haggles over the price of his own shirts.
I laugh, I skip and potter home,
my thighs chafe,
I don’t care.

I move too fast and forget to tell you where to be.
The door we are supposed to meet at is old,
wood peels orange and rust dulls the shine of hinges,
try to flake it off with vague fingers,
they slip away into acrid clouds.
This house knows our bodies, we coloured the walls
and washed, re-washed the plates.
You don't remember where it is.

In the space between walls
stagnant dust swells with manor house tales
of births and deaths, a ****** or two,
marriages, affairs and locked away shames.
We squint and we peer at moth eaten carpets
that hang from the wall, too delicate now
for tread underfoot, for stamping and squishing
and pounding out rows, unravelling structure,
whispers carry to the end of the hall
"have we made the right choice?"
"Please lower your voice,
I would find it too hard, but I can't know your pain"
The heart is merely a muscle afterall.

It was a hospital once, commandeered for the rest
of shell shocked tommies, basket case brigade
gone mad from the sight of vaporized mates,
claret sprays like champagne in traumatised hands
and they're there in the dust,
deformities rot in the space between walls
"and is this the right date?"
"yes" (I'm hoping we're late)
but an embryo is only a blob afterall.

A natural progression from soldiers to nutters
a bedlam, barbaric defective discharge
"if they wont agree then persuade them".
"Just do what is best".
Take the pill force the fluids
splayed over a bed,
and then throw out what's left,
the muck and the grief,
after scraping and clearing
the space between walls.

Half light slips and spreads nakedness over black furniture,
he turns to her and speaks
“tell me a secret;
tell me a secret so I can slam you into the mattress once more
and feel we’re still connected”
She sighs, brick walled air,
“you know them all, let me sleep”
he kicks onto his back,
“then how can you look through me?
Why does your hair stand on end when I touch you?”
Running ten fingers down her front,
static charge glues sheets to skin.
She places one hand
on the pillow next to hers;
“because I buried you two years ago”

She thought of it once
over the edge, sand stung cheeks
feel a chill and a thrill
and inch a way into dark.

She tried it once
glass
glints of excitement
painting stucco relief
on marble arms.

She ****** it up twice
rising through fog
coming to rest on a cold plated bed
shatter spines and splinters that drip on the floor,
leave more behind and
flirt with a pharmacist's smile.

Pity is empty and love is a chore.
She looks at you with eyes that
question your motives, sarcastic, acerbic
though you're not at fault.

Shake her if you feel the need,
by the shoulders, wrench the anguish
from your broken chest, smother her with it,
knot it into her hair and make her wear it,
a chewed up straw hat that makes summertime choke.

You can't do this anymore.

She likes it too much.