qarrtsiluni

Eddie

She has a moustache
and comes round twice weekly
to iron my shirts.

Today she looks up
with a twinkle in her eyes.
I smile

noticing for the first time
her beautiful eyelashes –

*

Gordon

When he first told me I gagged.
Three years have passed. Now they have
a house together, a life.
My wife visits them alone.
Still when I close my eyes I see
their naked bodies lying together.

Often my wife brings home news.
I fake indifference. Then she brings
the first sweet honey from bees
they keep in wooden hives.
It was the best I’d ever tasted.
I spread it on my toast for breakfast.

Each morning I think of my son.
The size of my love. When I scrape
the last of it from the bottom
of the pot I drive to their house.
A young man comes to answer the door,
shakes my hand and asks me in –

*

Oliver

We sit in awkward silence
side by side on the sofa.
I’m thinking I’m too old for all this

when my dead wife appears
perched on the television.
She gives me the thumbs up

so I reach across
and click off the lamp
to see what will happen.

Fingertips like cobwebs
land on my inside arm,
travel up and down –

by Fiona Robyn of a small stone