THE HARE AND THE STONE

And suddenly she is a hare, eyes bursting

with fear. Her husband snaps her neck. Fingers

smell of tea towels and dust. Their son gobbles

at her nipples, his father’s eyes unfocused.

She dreads the key in the lock. Sometimes,

she wakes to find him thrusting at her crotch.

She is a hare, paralysed on a cold,

edgeless ground…Even through windows stuck fast

with paint, dust whispers, gathering on lips.

If, like a surgeon, she were to cut him,

she would lay bare a pebble, smooth as glass,

nudging his heart. It is his ambition

sometimes to be a stone.