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Sue Butler

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Difficult to Say

While she segments grapefruit, cold from the fridge,
he is still warm from the shower. Pressing close from behind,
he revisits the tightly knotted muscles of her stomach, her breast,
the nipple. The sky is Monet, Debussey, travel brochure blue.


She turns, draws him into the soft, jasmine-white
of her dressing gown, rubs him dry as she would a child.
In the hail, sunlight dapples her half-packed case. She cools
                                                                                          his ardour
with camomile tea, weak, with a spoonful of honey. The back door
is wedged open and on the path a thrush smashes snails.


Upstairs, she chooses pink lipstick, mists herself in a haze
                                                                                    of cologne,
fastens the strap of her watch. The grapefruit needs sugar
but he stays where he is. It is a Wednesday, almost eleven o’clock.
When she gets back the tulips will be out. She will find it too green,
very crowded and damp. What she has missed will be difficult
                                                                                              to say.

 

Page(s) 38

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