In the House

Fingers stumble against plates;
a duster flicks ornaments
from their humdrum lives
to splinter on ash-stained hearth;
pot plants noticed too often, die.
Her hand clamps an island
of steak near where she hacks it
as if the flesh of an enemy
newly killed, beyond thought already.
In the end, forks in the drawer
attack her, egg stains return
to scrubbed pans, a whirring bowl
seams a spiral of blood
into creamy blandness.
This is the nemesis sent to one
who does nothing with ease—
the reward for services
rendered in love's absence.
Though it clamours still
for food, the body cries, All this
is so beside the point! —
but how can she hear it,
bent to the vacuum's whine
exacting its pound of dust
from shagpile; then that silence
ringing in her ears as
creeper curls through sill
and she imagines the whole house
held in the garden's forced embrace…
Her eyes shift to smudges that
censor her face superimposed on
glass figures by a lake;
a moonlit sea-storm; sunflowers
bursting from the frame of
their petals, from molten centres,
each tip a wanton flame
draining the air she breathes.