“Good morning, lovely weather,” he said
Leaning over the counter and
Unfilling a bucket of goodwill over my head
“I’d like a girlfriend,” I replied
“A friendly, pretty one
And preferably one not delivered from a bucket.”
“Picky, picky, aren’t we? Unbucketed girls don’t come cheap.”

He showed me his stock
I showed him the cash
I pointed to the one with the tiara and sash
Which was a mistake because she turned out to be Miss Worlds Apart
As, when I looked more closely, did all the others
Strange to see them together like that.
Then to make matters worse
The man in the shop turned out to be Mister Parallel Universe:
As soon as he had my money he disappeared.

And she didn’t even come with a free bucket.

It couldn’t last
She kept herself at a distance
Then blamed me for shouting
We never went out together
We slept in separate beds
Took separate holidays
I bought us a tandem
She bought a unicycle
I bought two tickets for the Superbowl
She bought a barge pole
“This isn’t what I was promised at the shop,” I said
But I could produce no bucket as proof of purchase.

She must have slipped out her bedroom window one night
I found a ladder propped there in the morning
A ladder, two lines that never meet.
It had to be him and sure enough
Up from the garden drifted the smell of what could only have been buckets.
And no letter of explanation from Miss Worlds Apart.