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They were innocent shades of blue until you found the faces. Scrawny cheeks, open mouths, their high-pitched voices like they’d been sucking on helium. In the light they diminished, pushed whispering into one another. By night, they blossomed across our exuberant tangle of limbs.
One Sunday they began to float down to the bed with our tea and toast, chanting as you watched the football, murmuring over my Observer. A little cry, and I found one had creased itself between us. That night it was back— bigger. No body. All mouth. I couldn’t shift it.
You and the cat moved to the spare room. I kept the curtains closed: ate, watched, read what they wanted. I think you said you couldn’t talk to me any more— they were making such a racket like starlings circling buildings, wings catching the last sun, before they finally settle, all together in a warm, black smothering.
A cow is breathing outside my window— no— a cow is snoring outside my window.
A regular, wheezing snuffle rises into the stillness of the evening.
I could reach out, gather its breath, grassy, warm, to keep pace with my own. I should like to dream of cows.
To dream of cows dreaming—
their soft jowls in constant motion—
of new pastures after the winter feeds, their mothers, brothers & sisters, the warm companionship of the barn,
before my dream remembers— as I struggle for the daylight—
we have lost their language & they choose not to understand ours.
Today is the day for not stopping the dripping tap which started when you did the washing up, fingers white, tightening round the head.
Today is the day for not putting the handle back on the bedroom door which flew off each time you did, hurtling down the stairs.
Tonight is the night for not altering the stereo clock which has winked for weeks since the power cut, three zeros soothing through the small hours.
She has no need to charm the bouncers.
All night she threads between the press of
dragons, snakes a snarling panther
the thrust of studs from noses, tongues.
She’s light as lipstick clear as vodka
hula-hooping smoke rings juggling pocketfuls of pills.
A wave of sound ripples her to the starlit roof.
The chalk moon throbs. She reaches up
easing it, like a tired child into her lap.
Soon she will slip back inside her supine husk
and the moon will bare its daylight mask.
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