You think of it while, say,
lying in bed on a dry-mouthed Monday morning,
eyes open, quietly hoping for a kind death,
the hour, the week, the month
moving forward,
unforgivably, oh jesus.
Again, at work, the sun behind you
reflecting on your computer monitor,
opaque, relentless —
and again,
when cheating Inland Revenue
becomes rote;
or when the sun in the afternoon,
sad and frightening,
filters through the bedroom curtains.
You can’t help but feel it
when the cat’s bowels give out,
and you know, suddenly, you’ve been ludicrously wrong.
All of it
just an animal cunning
that gets its way.
