The Exit Entrance

The furl of freshly flowered drooping delphinium
stands with belltops dancing
around my ankles.
Around the doorframe
bunches the branches of the bushy bowered
nasturtium, and I try to look at these and not inside.

A door opens and closes
somewhere upstairs, beyond me
and my black shadow. We stand alone,
drunk as flies in the glittering heat
which spreads outwards from the orifice.
The blue-black orifice of home.

The air is like the fetid womb of fallow and forest,
blowing out of the groaning house.
The key in my hand-
My hand holds the key
and it seems to be all that is sharp and clean
all that is left of the home that held hopes here.

Shutters shudder in the wind
which whines and winds it winsome way
around my motionless self.
It is a humpback building on a hunched hill
even now looking like a fairytale place
But the golden glamour has bled out into the carpet,
cold, now that the warmth has been sapped away.

I see nothing in this house. All sounds just echoes
of your girl grace. The smells are heavy
as if the house itself
is clinging to your stupidly happy imprint.
Perhaps that’s why the door refused me entrance.

Your swelled body, your flushed smile,
is no longer mine.
Because I came home too late.

And now I’m here to let you go.








40 lines