Jack and Jill

Just leave me here
why don't you?
I'd rather hide in this cupboard
and write in the dust
than witness your latest speech
about nothing. Nothing at all.

How can you draw blood with such passion?
Watch it slipping past your wrist

and smile as you examine carefully
the pain, the injury, and some battle won.

I feel for the cord
Switch the light on.

Here is a pair of high heeled shoes
I used on our wedding day
with the grown-up dress, it was May,
I should have noticed death in the air.

A broken lipstick left in a pocket.
Parisian red, worn with confidence
in those photos taken one evening
outside that restaurant, in the warm air.

I hear your voice drawing near
as I touch a blade hidden between rhymes
in a discarded book I read long ago.
It marks the page of Jack and Jill.

I see the illustration
but the colours are too bright
I can only feel their desperation
as I begin reading it again.

© Miakoda 2006