The

november i met you, with its strange warm days and all that whisky, birds we watchd from a distance, red beaked and bright songed, you told me you were not really together, not any more. And in that small, quiet pub, our knees half touching, i believed you.

January,

in your father's empty house, you told me the family trip together had been for convenience. But i saw your young sun socks drying on the ara, your wife's winter boots in the hall, and struck by the intimacy of the scene, how gentle a well worn boot can look without its foot, how tender the toe of a sock. In the morning, we cleaned your father's house before his return. The small folded damp sponge over kitchen counter, pulling your wife's hair from the bathroom plug hole, tere entwined. My own finer, paler hair, barely noticeable, less than a waning crescent. Years later, october, in your house, outside, the trees smelled of dut and apricot and decay. It was platonic by then. But still you drew a curtain so the neighbours would not seethe. Strange woman in your front room while your wife was away. We sat in the field, and still you talked. And there was something to your voice that was not regret. That was pride, perhaps. That was bombast. That was pleasure. And in the blackness of my mind, all those other women writhed. The lifted rock, the roots exposed the pale horror of it all.