Fix
 
Puffing up the stairs to your flat, each flight
I shed faux smiles and counterfeit happiness,
reaching your door, a sigh of relief
as if released from constrictor corset.
Filling the kettle your: I hit the jack pot at the Drs last week.
A locum rewarded your cock-and-bull story with a 100 Tramadol.
You tripped back home with a grin on your face.
But after the initial hit, your spoil sport body
adapted to the drug until it was useless as a placebo.
I wonder if you can cash them in.
But Oh Fuck from your dealer who had just entered rehab.
 
We bear coffee mugs into the sitting room
shielding them like candles against the gusts of our guffaws.
Here we do not gossip about errant fellas, fashion, off-spring,
but swearing like chavs, allow our bedlam thoughts to run riot.
Because outside this airy flat overlooking the pier,
your pidgin attempts to make yourself understood
by a mum whom life treats like favourite child
are met with: You are attention seeking.
I confess depression as if slipped off the wagon,
to my man whose life has confirmed his creed;
You make your own luck.
 
Driving home I still grin at
your drag-queen ripe comments,
your picaresque scrapes,
that will continue to gift for weeks.
This dose of each other lasting until
the next emergency text: We need to meet up-

Fiona Sinclair


If you have any thoughts on this poem, Fiona Sinclair  would be pleased to hear them.