SHE
She kisses little diagonal lipstick
cuts on his neck and
sucks bitter tea through clenched
teeth. Her ribs
are a box of barbed wire and knives.
She is
a bouquet of blue and purple roses
down her sides.
He bounces her like a rubber ball
because she isn’t
a supermodel or keeping the kids quiet,
because
he didn’t like dinner. She has
become clumsy,
walking into doors – she tries to be
his magazine-fuelled variety, his
centre (that cannot hold).
Her friends have tried to blow the
ice crystals
from her eyes, but he is her lover,
knight, Father-Confessor,
husband. She bore him three
children, one, or none,
yet she is tough as iron nails with
a brass screw loose
and she loves him for better or
worse, till death…
First published in The Press (Christchurch), 2000? 2001?
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