They hire him to take up gravestones
in old cemetery grounds.
Pay him by the hour,
to tease out lichen lost names,
note them,
in neat, thin rows of records
only his eyes will read,
and murmur each syllable
into the fresh split of dark soil
before the groundsman comes
with his sack of grass seed,
already whistling
to no one at all.
The fridge stinks again,
the thing lolling at the back,
sweating, sickly sweet,
cling film wrapped and taunting
as if to say ‘this is just your desert
for peeling me down
till we both cried shameless,
and you held a knife like a question.’
Cut me off at the ankles or so you said,
stood astride my stump, saw grinned.
‘Not so pretty now are we’
either of us.
Spent the winter finding my roots,
you brought on your hot house girls
throwing out the deadheads
before they even had chance to wilt.
Spring freshened up all that toughening
from too many years the same.
Found new shoots moving upwards,
more bend, less bark to my bite.
Summer and I redecorated it all,
cloaked myself in colour,
announced my presence, my survival.
Dared you to try cutting me down again.
Why do that to yourself?
Play around with perfection,
even if it was only skin deep,
and the smoothness of these curves
turned your stomach at night,
when dusk settles its hands
either side of your hips,
presses into the grooves
where his tools worked you
into beauty.
Mounted you his sculpture
for all men to see.
Do you not appreciate how
his love made you
into a woman worth seeing?
If I was my mother,
and you were a horse,
I would not wrap the lead
into my fist
as we walk the track
with their ruined nissan huts
patch up by ivy,
so we can’t see through
the hollow sockets
of broken windows
to the emptiness inside,
always emptiness inside,
and always me with a fist
of lead
to draw you closer
to heel
in case the emptiness
is not what it seems.
Carol J Forrester 
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