After
There are moments
pinned to you as latent engrams
when life coagulates in one drop of blood
water sweat semen tears ink
her
hand wore a raven ring
the room intense with cold
when she took the whole pack of morphine pills the 400mg calculated by
current weight of 7 stone (but does that include the lumps)
and the tiniest globulous sip of water
3 days before
my first birthday without her
sweat
trickles down my freckled breasts it drops on the tiles I’ve mopped badly
so that the grime line is visible under the steel refrigerator doors
where I retrieve the bowl of Nectarines Aux Armagnac for the portly businessman
with the lechy colleague who asked me if I was aware of my own destiny
sniggering at the waitressy reply I give
since it would belittle me to talk philosophy
with a man who spat in his hors d’oeuvres so his partner would not try them
I touched
her shoulder and wondered if we would hug today
since her husband declared he no longer loved her or their two year old son
but preferred Natalia who had long straight hair and looked like
the photos of our mother in her sixties mini-skirt and kohl
who made jewellery for women to wear whilst sleeping with their husbands
while she was slumped into rolls of fat breasts and belly and my hand didn’t span her upper arm which used to look like Kate Moss’s
protruding from her ‘pulling dress’ with spaghetti straps from Jakarta
and the only tears she shed were for
boys who looked like girls
or her mutilated grey Siamese
dropping the pizza
off the edge of the perfect white plate
to stare at the amniotic fluid pooling under my table on the laminate flooring you laid by hand on your cracked knee for three days with Brad
while you looked for the watch timer you forgot you were wearing
and I stared at the black interior of a holdall containing the doll sized nappies
I doubted I could fasten around the waist of a doll let alone a red faced squalling thing with heart and lungs and pearlescent fingernails
that you would hold in your arms two hours later
while I investigated the hospital shower stall
and watched paint red blood
cascade down my inner thighs
to swill with water down the Art Deco floor grill
drops
from a sable brush
with a thick handle shaped like a carved chair leg
to make sweeping calligraphy flow inkily across the stretched cotton frame
of the T-shirt that Caisa hung in her flat in Göteborg that she sent the photo of
her wearing when we saw Ulrika outside the museum on Götaplatsen
and I stood in the window next to some Europeans and thought will I always feel English unable to see the future where my children speak Valenciano
and I read the digital European news emailed to me because
I need to find out if they’ve printed the article about our battle to save the Carrascal Mountain from urban developers
or if my poem’s in print
on that forum
on a tree stump
near the London to Cambridge railway line
in the shade cast behind the corona glare of a station lamppost
his penis constricted by the black mesh of my fishnets I refused
to remove, his penetrating finger adorned me with the scarlet blush
of my first orgasm
caused as much by the sight of his purple prick dripping
as by the hoot of the train
and the backdraft whoosh
and the stars coming into view
after.
