un acuerdo

         an accommodation

—— and I both agreed that something had to change,

but I was still stunned and not a little hurt when I

staggered home one evening to find she’d draped a

net curtain slap bang down the middle of our home.

She said, “I’m over here and you’re over there, and

from now on that’s how it’s going to be.” It was a

small house, not much more than a single room,

which made for one or two practical problems.

Like the fridge was on my side and the oven was on

hers. And she had the bed while I slept fully

clothed in the inflatable chair. Also there was a

Hüsker Dü CD on her half of the border which I

wouldn’t have minded hearing again for old times’

sake, and her winter coat stayed hanging on the

door in my domain. But the net was the net, and we

didn’t so much as pass a single word through its

sacred veil, let alone send a hand crawling beneath

it, or, God forbid, yank it aside and go marching

across the line. Some nights she’d bring men back,

deadbeats, incompatible, not fit to kiss the heel of

her shoe. But it couldn’t have been easy for her

either, watching me mooch about like a ghost,

seeing me crashing around in the empty bottles and

cans. And there were good times too, sitting side by

side on the old settee, the curtain between us, the

TV in her sector but angled towards me, taking me

into account.

Over the years the moths moved in, got a taste for

the net, so it came to resemble a giant web, like a

thing made of actual holes strung together by fine,

nervous threads. But there it remained, and remains

to this day, this tattered shroud, this ravaged lace

suspended between our lives, keeping us

inseparable and betrothed.

Simon Armitage

Seeing stars

poems

Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York,
and in Canada by Random House of Canada,
Limited, Toronto.
Originally published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber in 2010.

    [/ezcol_1half_end]