Manicure
One week after my rape I decide
to get my nails done for the first time.
Him and I divided by cloudy Perspex,
a small hole in the bottom for
our hands to slip through.
We talk in hands, pointing to
ballerina shape, shade 317, a blushing pink
from a wheel of magentas, corals, fuchsias.
Dremel whirs through the soft lit salon,
haze of dust rising to his face. I fantasise it
filing off the – bites forced on my breasts.
Holding hands, he shifts from one finger
to the next, careful as a child
making a daisy chain.
Box of blue gloves sit on the shelf,
untouched – I surprise myself hoping
he forgets to put them on.
Salinity
Him and I sit in the bath together, legs tangled and twisted, seeing each other from our opposite ends. I’m working on acceptance. Accepting how my brain was passed down by my mother and hers before. How in this moment I am not here. I float above us, a sheet of sea glass muddling our bodies in green blues. I think about breaking a shard of it to use later. Depression laps at my knees in waves, coursing to drag us under. I see straight through his unclouded eyes to that spotless skull, a rumble bursts through his chest that wants to shake the salt water out of me. I wonder if he can pinpoint the moment the wave washes over me, a shudder beneath my eyelids, my salt seeping into our bath.
The waves gulp us down.
I drag you to the seabed
by our knotted legs.
Holiday
Here, the water and sky pulse
blue. Light casting down
a yellowed haze.
Waves lick the rocks in greedy laps
slapping their tongues,
a boisterous dog.
I pluck my antidepressants
from each foiled packet, flick them
into the sea, hoping one will slip
inside an oyster’s gullet, get coated
in its chalk, smothered under layer
after layer, until it is reborn
pearlescent and glamorous.
Finds itself dangling from a rich ear
so it can keep on holidaying
when I’m long gone.