Before The Fall

He got her drunk very quickly:
holding hands they found the broom cupboard
where he had control as far as the fall,
the rasping descent of her tights.
When his hand covered wet hairs
she took over among furniture wax, dust,
the cloying yellow of polishing cloth.
When he was sick
she comforted him.

He couldn't do it properly: the club,
the office had left out details of delight.
Satisfied, he would collapse out,
puzzled at why she still squirmed,
held on to him, tears curling into her mouth.
This was something stories always omitted:
that her joy would seem like pain
when he focused after release.

In the third week of the relationship
she was tripping on organic acid,
would stop, pick up a rained out leaf,
would give it into his hand,
full of dead things before they reached the car.
When they drove she sat with mouth open
as though photographed on the impact
of a stomach punch, her right hand gripping
the skin of his leg: he feared her,
slapped out sideways into her face.
She touched the cut with her tongue,
gurgling gratitude for the strange taste.

He stood looking through uncleaned windows,
concentrated on the yellow of his car below.
On the uncarpeted floor, with practice,
she closed her eyes and drew on the cigarette.
Twill jacket and polo-neck made him sweat,
his nape skin red from a hair cut.

Between two smokers she smiled up at him;
as the weed approached he apologised
suddenly wanting familiar territories:
beer, to put his hand up her skirt.
At the bottom of the limbed stairs
he booted the cat, a drop kick in their twenty-five
as he imagined her sylph laugh
gathering chuckles around the room.

There was no premonition of the wet Hog's Back,
sports car slumped snout into a beach,
their corpses giving the vehicle arms,
petrol and blood at last dripping together
but quick flashes of a planned lunch,
cold red beef and a cherry wood fire,
game pie and for him two pints of colder beer,
the winter air tucking under their eye lids,
spinning on the gravel at Clandon:
the hand steaming from quick moisture,
the aromatic finger drawn back into his nose.
Dazed after mutual masturbation
they slewed into a conservative end.