EXHIBIT A:
The empty drawer where the cutlery used to be.
Half a glass of red wine left in a bottle,
wine stains in a ring around a ‘best boyfriend’ mug.
Another stain- my hand print on the wall,
and there’s no blood but something more urgent
and inevitable
like courage,
leaking away
in the wrong direction.
EXHIBIT B:
The pockets of your coat,
their contents.
An English to French phrasebook,
a packet of tobacco
mostly given away, a piece of paper on which
you keep notes on the smallest observations
imperceptible to any other eye.
If I had to choose a reason, it would be this one
Love, or the thing that staggers behind it,
undignified, pooling at our feet.
EXHIBIT C:
My hand in between both of yours.
You trying to get the blood back to my fingers.
The dog-eared pages of the book I’m reading.
You trying to hear me over train sounds,
other sounds,Band I am repeating myself
because I am too scared to speak up.
Is my voice lost somewhere? Did it drop
from my throat onto the winter roads,
is it wailing from inside a gutter
somewhere and should I go out looking,
to find it before it drowns?
