Jetsam

Jetsam by Peter Moore

If I begin it will be with ordinary things, wallpaper curling down like feathers from the damp walls, the holy water font dried and crusted with salt, your apron hanging from the wooden hook at the back of the blue door as if you had just taken it off. I can see you now unfastening it, pulling it over your head, straightening your hair where the straps had tossed it. Rubbing Atrixo on your hands to mask the smell of onions that had gathered in your skin after preparing dinner. Slipping your shoes on.

And still I speak of ordinary things, your tweed coat hanging alone in under the stairs, the one with the short belt, buttons on the sleeve, the cuffs frayed. How you put it on, moved along the hall, as if in step to some unknown music, out along the green road to collect primroses and cowslips, snagging your sleeve on the briars. Sometimes, turned towards the window, your face was in shadow as you studied the waxwings glutting on windfalls, their tails hidden in among the red berries. What else is there but these ordinary myths, boiled up each day in a pot of potatoes, bread sliced like stepping stones, a cup cracked and stained from too much tea, locked in the memory until an apron hanging on a hook on a blue door opens it up.