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Bathroom Smoker |
Her feet were cut when I met her,
bare-soled in the bathroom
at someone else’s party.
Mildewed tiles.
Dusty Domestos bottles.
A smell of sick
and bad drains.
She was beautiful
like spitting candlewax.
The sort I would peel from
the back of church pews
when I was a kid.
Sprawling in the empty tub,
bloody socks sopping on the basin.
“I tried to rinse them,” she said.
“But it’s not coming out.”
Breathing a fuggy luxuriance,
untroubled by smoke alarms
or the clunking extractor fan.
Her ash hung in there,
tip-clinging in squiggles:
I didn’t want them to drop
on the enamel.
Inevitable.
And she was too.
copyright 2014
Holly
Magill |
