Sincerely, Jennifer x

Every now and then I find myself fantasising about the most unremarkable things.
Daydreaming about washing dishes as you dry with a tattered teatowel,
when my guilt comes in gallons and works its way down my throat,
I think about washing dishes with you,
with your favourite record playing from the living room,
and your hands, wrinkled from the water and the waves of time wrap around my throat,
because I am a bad, bothered, bastard girl and…

I think about how I’d pretend to fall asleep in the sandy steps of a dandy beach,
your legs, a perfect pillow for the perfect pretender,
who could pretend she’d done nothing wrong.
Kept on the straight and narrow by your slender fingers,
slight around my sweet neck,
slender fingers that remind me of the girl who haunts my unwoken hours,
and there I go again,
going off the rails,
going where you cannot follow,
because you cannot keep me from my nature,
no matter what you do.

Nothing about you thrills me more than the thought of us singing lullabies to the little lambs we had,
one summer, by the coast,
twin blessings, so we didn’t have to try more than once.
My lapis lazuli love,
when I’m medicated by my own assorted guilt,
assuming the life of a lady I wrote about long ago,
hoping, while hopeless, that she can be kept from her urges.

You do the pick up,
so I am not tempted by the trail of “yummy mummies” that lines the school gates,
and you enjoy the praise, for being an involved Dad,
so it takes the edge off being sad about the sham that awaits you when you get home,
and how your slender fingers have no choice but to roam to my naughty, easily misled neck.