I.
You said this poem was more of an essay, then remembered you’re a polite man,
“Well done, you managed to make Acton beautiful.” Beauty is lumped in the boot.
The house was sponged in pink, and lemonade sun, cooing breeze through the cracks,
sleeping baby. Now the weeds are wiped away, blackberries peak from their blankets,
ripe, alive. Your room is sanitised. No more smears of paper and unpaired socks on
the mattress, it’s all skin now, the papers packed, the socks have grown up
and left the nest, yet, the drawers hang from their hinges, just as the first day you
brought me over, and I, sliding out my feet from under your thighs, crouched
beneath the drawers’ underbelly, stroked them with a screwdriver then slithered back.
I could never fix what was meant to stay broken.
II.
Your flatmate refused to be an accessory to the crime
of warmth, remember when we shared loneliness
in frost-plumed breath? Winter weaves a year, and I
am shoving your dog-eared notes full of wedding
sheet music into plastic bags, remember when I asked,
what would you play if the alter threatened you? You
answered, at our wedding? Your song, by Elton John,
and your nose was pink with hope in the morning,
remember when I sang White Flag and you fingered
the piano keys? The sun blinked over its earth and I
still wear those black flakes — dried mascara?
— from your leather couch that was so cold,
I could see into the future. I closed my eyes.
Held my breath.
III.
Acton — where the soap was lime-tinted water, and the shower
was a wet hole in the roof, and the breakfast bowls smelled of
egg and Marmite. God mumbled a deep curse in our sleep, but
it was just your drunk flatmate, and I was not asleep.
We woke up to rolling drum sets, the honk of a trumpet,
your cawing chords rivalled the perched omen on the window
sill, but, in the rare moments when your distance curled inside
duvets, I could hear the children laugh in the nursery outside:
shrill shouting of one name or another, grasping at
small hours and plastic slide playmates. They seemed
desperate for attention, dressed in glare and parents’ clothes.
Children smelled awful, and made too much noise, you said.
One child sat alone by the fence. His yellow raincoat
too big for the miracle of life, too dead to articulate it.
IV.
So much of you still lives in this stripped room
of mirrors. I see only my reflection. Soon, we sit
down and eat curry from Fresh and Delicious,
that chicken, burger, curry place down the road, your
treat, beside the lack of your kitchen and among
aristocracy: wires draped with damp pants, crinkled
shirts, dazzling Primark labels. I swear there’s
limescale in the spice, now all I taste is the tea
you made me each morning before pouring
oat milk over the Weetabix, which I envied
for its porous borders, how it soaked until
it became whole. I never knew how you felt
about my poems. Maybe you liked them. You
won’t like this one. Then again, it’s more of an
essay than a poem. Maybe the beauty is
reflected in the space between words.
—Published 13th of June 2026
About Alexandra M. Gilbert