THE HEADBOARD

The voices from the street are very real,

but the radio spreads rumours all night;

it is background with nobody important.

Wide awake, you poke my stomach and nip 

your waist for further signs of depredation, 

the radiator tut-tutting from the other side 

of the room. Books, bookmarked, 

lie on the floor, and between us the scent 

of rain on skin and alcohol lipstick. 

This is what it is to be beside ourselves. 

You whip off the duvet and sense

above you the weight of the headboard, 

a cheap gravestone, shouldered, blank.

I snore and boil and can’t be moved.