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Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

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Helen Clare

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I have beome a stranger to my house

It's all my fault. All those trips back and forth,
leaving it, like a dog in quarantine.

It's forgotten my smell, can't quite slip back
into the pattern of my days. At night

its noises wake me - rattles and whines
I can't quite place. Reaching through the net

of sleep, I find the switch a hand's breadth
from where it used to be. The room has swirled,

everything settled again like sand, though light
pokes in through what should be a solid wall.

By day, I can never find a pen, my books
are packed away, my hairbrush in another town.

I open drawers, find gadgets I never bought.
A stranger's photos tumble from the stack

behind the cupboard door. The furnishings
have suddenly faded, the paint has thinned.

I see the walls the way they were before
I came. The house dreams of different paper,

of other colours. Each Friday as I leave,
it watches me silent, half curtained.

All weekend it waits eager for the sound
of someone else's voice.

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