AFTER YOU’RE GONE
Your shirt hanging out to dry gesticulates
in the wind, waving its empty arms like wings.
Inside I’ve laid out olives oatcakes hummus
things I love that you will not eat, no cheese
no bread, no meat. Instead of our voices
there is only the hush of my feet on wooden
floorboards, a book to read, a cup of tea
the birds flapping in the tree above your shirt
now dancing loosely in the breeze.
I still haven’t hung the curtains
all those barbed hooks too daunting to approach.
Soon bats will come like tiny ghosts flying
in the face of early night so fast I’ll think I see right
through them to the dark, the stars.