The killer K (Older couples who don’t hold hands)

I'm quite happy to note that once again Forward Press have been kind enough to include one of my sketchy pieces in a forthcoming anthology - A Tapestry Of Thoughts.


The killer K (Older couples who don’t hold hands)

Her lover is the night,
but not the shining kind; too prone to rust.
The breath on her neck is but the draft,
appealing with its joyous flux.

Sat on opposing sides of the table.
On opposing sides of a life almost shared.
They look past one another.

When did the K attach itself to new.
What ever became of new.
Remember the days before we thought we knew.

She longs for a touch unburdened by the ritualised memory of years.
Pasteurised experience and straight line patterns strangle slowly the new.
She has screamed and whispered it all before;
see me,
as I am,
not as I perhaps have been.
A prison that was once a shelter - his understanding of her.
Each one of his presumptions adds a bar.

He still sometimes longs for touch, but learnt fears dull the impulse.
He knows it all, he thinks. How it has been, how it is.
Gazing at the auguries of their static embraces he even knows how it will be.

She has sought the new, outside and in.
In her face and in her dresses.
Sometimes she longs simply for a new name to answer to.
A new word which won’t reek of their past.
Instead she cries the same thick mascara tears.

They hide from one another in their blandishments.
They are always OK.
It is formulised this enquiry and response.
They talk,
at one another,
from time to time.
By reflex alone they remain;
half greedy for a lukewarm taste of contact.