She drinks a bit more
she loves a bit less
she no longer fits
in her wedding dress.

She’s given up trying,
accepted her fate,
feels herself thinning
while she stacks on the hate.

Doesn’t feel like his partner
his mate or his wife,
all she feels is as hard
and as sharp as a knife.

She reels her mind back
but can’t seem to recall,
what she ever saw in him,
why she married at all.

It’s a dead man’s float,
face down on the bed,
they sleep separate, unsound
in their queen sized dread.

So she’ll tread bitter water
as she has done for years,
not so much married to him
as she is to her fears.

*****

Lindsay McLeod writes: “‘She’ was written in my head, wearing ear protection in a factory. It was about my (then) partner who had recently escaped a toxic relationship.” The poem was originally published in Fine Flu.

Lindsay McLeod is an Australian writer who lives quietly on the coast of the great southern penal colony with (yet another ferocious Aussie animal) his cattle dog,  Mary. Lindsay still drives a forklift to support his poetry habit.

Photo: “fulla-ocell / leave-bird ( Every little thing she does is magic )” by Jordi@photos is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.