Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

If she hadn’t burned the gravy, he wouldn’t have felt he had to tell her how much he’d always hated the way she made it.  She would never have known that it was his considered opinion that she overdid the flour and had no intuitive sense of the appropriate moment to stop adding stock.  So she wouldn’t have felt the need to confide in him how much she had always resented his flatulence about the house, nor complain that this increased her distaste for the business of washing his underpants.  He in turn probably wouldn’t have mentioned his own distaste at her fondness for short skirts, a fondness that, in his judgment, was not wholly appropriate in a woman approaching the menopause, actually.  And if he hadn’t mentioned that, she wouldn’t have felt that it was only fair to point out that it might be considered unseemly for a man of his age to wear his hair so long and his trousers so tight.  He might not  then have opined that it was pathetic of her to resent him for achieving a better class of degree, and she wouldn’t have countered that nobody in their right mind would want any class of degree from the university he had attended.  He wouldn’t have offered the view that she was turning into her mother and she wouldn’t have responded that, in point of fact, he was turning into her mother.  And if all that hadn’t come to pass, she probably wouldn’t have ended up pouring gravy over his head and he wouldn’t have assaulted her with an organic parsnip.  Hell, they might still be married! 

Hell, the Twin Towers might still be standing.