Image © Kathrine Sowerby 2016
| by Kathrine Sowerby | February 1, 2016 |
The party is on the top floor of a tower block
and we are drunk, Tia Maria. Does it matter
if one person falls from the balcony? Two? If
the children get to school on time? The dog
is full of puppies and neither of us know
what we are doing at the end of the corridor—
something to do with mathematics—or what
we are going to do, but her eyes trust me
and I can feel life moving inside her. I know
the French for mascara—deep and layered
as the blankets wrapped around my body.
The cat sleeps in the curve of my back. Music
flicks in time with the movement of my wrist
and my lashes clot on the third application.
Where are you now, Maria? The room is bare
but full of dancing and I can’t find you—naked
as the light bulb that swings and swings
to the beat of a magpie’s wings.
__________
Kathrine Sowerby is a writer and home educator living in Glasgow. She curates and makes fourfold and her chapbooks include Unnecessarily Emphatic (Red Ceilings Press, 2015) and Margaret and Sunflower (dancing girl press, 2016). kathrinesowerby.com