Monday 6 April 2015

What is an Affair?

They were going ‘out’
Each told the respective spouse
Put on the unsuspecting coat
Typically going ‘out’ was of the house
-          Yet today was something else.
The clinch with which the fingers press


Over the texted excuse even later
‘Friend offered coffee and could not refuse’
‘Train not due for an hour – signal failure’
The routines they hate they now reuse


Tired of putting on a face, she slips
In and out of smiles and grasps his hand
She is what is what would be known as ‘comfortable’
Others give him the name of  ‘family man’


Yet they  have dared this kind of tryst
Like children in the café corner
The high-stools seemingly arranged for shame
For he is ‘baiter’ and she the 'other woman’
(Also husband and son, and wife and daughter)


According to  the slow accordion
Of Sunday-noon-time conversation
Nobody notices really what they talk about
For all they see is bad behaviour.


Both look at eyes beneath the mask
The paper of their words, recycled later
In heads , in beds – assuming marriage
The title ‘mummy’, ‘daddy’ – nursing failure.


 The cautious, clutch of another’s interest
Then the slow sensation of mutual trust
When mixed with social obligation
Becomes the family-thrown accolade of dust


The anxious ash of bodies smarting
In the ceremony of the ‘working week’
She cleans it from the kitchen for an hour
It coats his lashes when he sleeps
(She picks the children’s toys up from the floor)


People try to accept it with ‘good’ or ‘habit’
Implying positivity in a test of time
Which smashes one life through another
And says joint recovery is always right.


She already had the second baby
And he acquired the car, the points
All the correct seats of successful;
Yet he sits unheard
She has no voice


These are the hours they become unknown
The forbidden poetry  of their skin
Yet they go in fear to narratives
They are too scared by time to leave.


For this is the watched process, desperate
In the want to be two people, interested.


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