REFLECTIONS AND TIME PASSING by Anna Coutts

Arts Richmond

Online - 29 August 2020

In bed with the children, sleeping in your arms, you have said in public,

they are angels, they are angels, wiped their faces, kissed their downy little heads,

in the window facing the bed you see yourself against the darkness outside,

the bedroom light above omits your eyeballs, your lipstick, the shadow

shows your skeleton. You picture yourself dead.

A little window above the kitchen sink, the meals are eaten, they are playing outside,

your husband picks one of them up, the little girl throws her head

back and laughs unashamedly, in the reflection your lips curve up neatly out

of habit, you watch them drop again. 

There is a gush of water, the sink is spilling over, the tap is still going and the

sound mixes with her laughter and fractures like a mosaic.

of habit, you watch them drop again.

On her wedding day you catch each other’s eyes in the bathroom mirror, the

veneer of your joy is pulled away like a veil, honesty feels unnatural on you;

your reflection says to her what you cannot: You are wasting your life.

from ABOUT TIME, the 2019 anthology of shortlisted entries from The Roger McGough Poetry Prize. Copies of this Anthology can be purchased for £5 including P&P from Arts Richmond.