Drab Monday morning - another next week.
My life? Smart metered by Bingo sponsored
daytime t.v. Chat shows. Dry toast. Black tea.
I need essentials – a trip to Aldi.
A tyre’s punctured – it’s a long wet trek
in sighing rain. I can go tomorrow.
There’s a tin of beans – they’re much better cold.

I am not alone, unloved, neglected,
women have loved me - but no one lately,
not since Aoife. I really blew it there.
I could have, should have, handled it better,
played hard to get. They say women like that,
but I was in love - assumed she loved me,
like a fool rushed in – I assumed wrongly.

I pink-ribboned her cards, her billets-doux.
slid them behind flea market curios
in my wall mounted trophy cabinet .
An obscure treasure. A secret love,
out of sight to curious eyes but mine.
Did she ever love me? Who is to say?
She was expert at ambiguity.

Watching ‘Jeremy Kyle’ (for schadenfreude)
my ennui was tranquillity compared.
A sudden eruption - kitchen bedlam.
The immoveable cabinet, constant,
symbolic perhaps of my devotion
slumped suicidally from its fixings -
two doors unhinged and three glass panes broken.

The fallen cupboard straddled a table
and fortuitously placed Chesterfield.
Porcelain tea pots, Moroccan tagines
(bought from a hawker in Albufeira)
smashed bottles, a vintage perculator
shards of glass, fragments of terracotta
carpeted the quarry tiled kitchen floor.

A paste jar – anchovy, and Knorr Stock Pot
spilled. Defacing a favourite snapshot -
Aoife at lunch, waving, blowing kisses.
I licked a soft cloth to stroke clean the smears
but erased her face, the eyes and the hair.
Aoife faded like a dissolving wraith -
two fingers left and enigmatic smile.

A jag of loneliness washed over me.
“... had an accident that was not your fault?”
from the t.v. brought tears of rage from me.
A cup of tea? Both mugs were smithereens.
My passport lay ‘Lea and Perrins’ dripped wet.
I cuffed off the sauce stain and headed South
by boat and train to buy a new tagine.

I am sitting on a Lisbon terrace,
eating fried anchovies, drinking douro .
Sea gulls swoop. Dancing jasmine scents the breeze.
A trio plays. A woman sings fado.
Her song bleeds duende. The hurt of love.
I don’t know the words but I know... I know.
They sing of my life. They sing of Aoife.