I find myself here, by choice,
the swells of heat between duvet
and body and your body,
naked except for a gold necklace
half sunken in light
from the bedside lamp.
My skin is slick and unpleasant,
my toes knock yours
in the space we can’t see.
Not the first time, not really,
but the first time here.
A different mattress, pillow,
shapes that before were yours
and yours alone
but you’ve let me in,
a secret place to many
with frosted grape walls
and your name
blaring ornamental from a shelf,
seen by only one man besides me.
You told me who.
The blistered image of you
with a stranger
in the place I’m now in
makes my throat sting
a little,
makes my muscles tense
as though about to
run the hundred metres.
You look at me,
tangled in white,
a tattoo of a flower
I don’t know on your shoulder,
moving when you move,
a grey filling
clamped in a tooth
at the back of your smile.
How strange, perhaps,
I notice this now,
I didn’t before.
I wasn’t looking.
Written: September 2017.
Explanation: A poem written in my own time. Feedback welcome. 'Frosted grape' is genuinely the name of a paint shade in the UK. A link to my Facebook writing page can be found on my HP home page.
NOTE: Many of my older pieces will be removed from HP at some point in the future.