By Richard Mather
Making his advances in tall steps,
Davie marks Suzie standing small
at the kitchen sink.
She drops something, holds still her breath.
‘No-one’s gonna listen to you, Suzie,
and that’s a fact’.
The ugly brown voice of a drunk
scrapping for a fight.
From him bad odours rise, smells
of fish and river foam, tobacco and beer.
He picks up a carver, puts it down.
‘So don’t even think about it’.
It is evening, it is hot, and a dead carp’s eye
looks up at Suzie from the dish drainer.
An attack is imminent.
Davie patrols the kitchen, his heart
a drum beating a tattoo.
From his hands an anniversary gift
of bella perle plates goes to the wall.
Underfoot a confetti of glass,
the untold fragments of a broken marriage.
‘God damn you, Davie. Get out’.
Suzie’s on her knees, again.
Her patience is stretched thin,
like skin over a hollow frame.
Davie marches over, his steel toe cap
colliding with Suzie’s most tender spot:
yesterday’s bruise.
A deadly quiet occupies the space
vacated by comprehension.
Nothing he says can change anything now.
Davie skulks, his insides
glowing dark; black lava, hot
and inviscid, breaks the crust and surges.
House lights flicker and dusk
marks the end of twilight.
II
They came with sirens, these strangers
with their notebooks and equipment.
Intermittent chatter, concerned eyes.
Radio static crackles like fat in the oven.
Suzie’s tearful mother is talking.
Who is the injured party here?
Am I alive? Is he alive? Now look,
when I move my hands the air moves
and cools under the fanning air.
Suzie? You are Suzie, aren’t you?
I confess, I’m Suzie Wilde, woman, wife
and daughter, twenty-nine years old.
III
A knife came to me from the cutting board.
It entered my grasp as objects often do.
I held it like a key to a prison.
Its blade penetrated as deep as I dared.
Behind his back, the knife commits murder.
It fell from my hand onto the kitchen floor.
A wild man of blood, Davie is wild no more.
I sit a while. His hands and face I stroke.
I come to this room; the light doesn’t work.
The room is empty. I straighten the bed,
turn back the covers, and I do all this
with a feeling I cannot name. Not real,
I lie on my back, these red fingers
clasped over my stomach, coffin-like.
Hard I stare at the light that doesn’t work.
From the beam the bulb hangs limp, suspended.
I wonder if the time I’ve served on earth
is a prelude to life, a prelude to death.
And in the darkness of this, our house,
I dream I am dead already and Davie
is the one who is lying in my place.
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