Apricot Press

Scenes of barbarity
in the utility room:
laminate, skirting, ridges, panels
pebble-dashed with the life’s fluid
of you, and I, and this half dead rabbit.
All dead. Half a rabbit.

Legs fox-fur-folded for a final time –
glove-puppeted body, (inside out).
Blackened, greyed entrails
my A in Biology
should be able to identify.

Pray for me:
and for the efficacy of washing-up liquid and kitchen towel,
on hands and knees, the room filling
with that metallic creep.

Not an odour, nor a smell –
a twang into sinus telling me to

run.

Minutes later, lifting the
cast iron pot,
I feel metal enter
through my back teeth like fillings.
It’s clean, I tell myself.
It’s clean.

Photo credit: Jan Gustavsson