UnLoved

She was unloved abruptly, as though

unFriended on Facebook where all the

family photos, the inane comments, the

frapes, the smileys, all those

terrible moments of happiness

hung nakedly in front of the

whole world, the laundry she

put out clean now

dirty again.

The Lost Thing

The search for the lost thing turns the

house upside down: drawers are

tipped out, bins rifled to their

mucky depths, papers

stupidly shaken; every step taken

retaken, reconsidered, was it

lost then? was it there when

that happened? Then, usually, the

lost thing turns up where it

always was and we laugh at our

forgetfulness, ignoring the

upside-down house and all the other

lost things within it.

Groundling

A groundling in the TV business I was

happy to sit on top of a

swaying ladder ready to drop

dead leaves on an actress

bereaved in wartime but looked up to meet the

eyes of the naked woman in her window

casually brushing her long brown hair, her

breasts swaying gently with each

languorous sweep, her gaze so

commanding that the squawk of

“Action, Action” from my

walkie-talkie went west as I gawped, a

groundling in her more

urgent play.

Days

Days aren’t of themselves onerous: there are

hard moments but it’s mostly

boredom, a big old

empty building in which

shafts of sunlight

pierce through holes in

dusty brickwork and you

hope to find yourself

illuminated once in a while.

Her Namesake Diana

In the black woods, under the

cloud-shuttered light of her

namesake Diana, her Mother

told her the secrets of being

chased yet chaste, of the

pleasures of the mouth, of

acquiring the taste for the

moon-coloured effluvia of a man, of the

unexpected utility as entrance of the

dark star between her buttocks, of

so many things that left her

shaking with the cold, embarrassment and the

first tremors of awakened lust.

 

Now, a Mother herself, she

looked back at the lit-up house where

her daughter and her latest boy were

supposed to be behaving, considered the

Pill she’d put her on, knew it was safer but

wondered if she had learnt more under the

protection of Myth, regretted the

degradation of the Heavens, knew

she had been more adventurous than her

well-protected daughter, heard again her

Mother’s voice, dead in the dark, echoless,

“It’s a Huntress Moon, not a Hunter’s”, under

her namesake Diana.