You’re there below
my kitchen window,
stretched out
beneath the washing.
You tell yourself
this is study,
with your plastic-bound
booklet and fluorescent
pen, the text facing
the ground, weighing
down today on page
three-nine-three.
All lipgloss, sunglass,
moisturiser: your
iridescence is brilliant
in the changing light.
So as I’m rinsing suds
off the rubber piece
of the breast pump
that cones over the breast,
I wonder if you
could assemble it
in ten seconds
as if it were a gun –
you, semi-naked,
heady with sun,
brainy and young.
And as you
are coming to grips with
the shifts of salts
in the kidney,
and how the body
just knows
to activate thirst,
I’m filling this cup
that won’t spill
or slosh
no matter how
it is shaken or tossed,
thinking how rightly
they have called it magic.