The Routine
by and published in Edition Eleven of Pomegranate
The door ajar, she hums the sun
has got it’s hat on as she carefully
paints her lips frosted pink and
unrolls wiry curls, one by one.
I sneak the carrier bags behind her
unmade bed, unwrap the pastel
fairy cakes, dot them on plastic plates.
“He’ll be here in five minutes, so be quick.”
she sings. “I’ve been baking all morning.”
She gestures proudly at my cakes. I coo,
unravel her gown, rub soapy
water over her insect like body.
It drips to her feet like tears. She wants
the yellow suit today, the pearl brooch
pinned just so. “He bought me that for
my twenty first.” I sit on her bed,
hold her hand, as she tells me for the umpteenth
time, he’d been a spy, for the M.O.D, still kept
a gun by the alarm clock. We all knew he’d
been a greengrocer, died in ’79.
She shuffles the tiles in fluffy slippers, tutting.
“Can you call him, dear? He’s never late.”
I step out into the corridor, come back in.
“He can’t make it today. He’s stuck in traffic.”
She questions me, outraged, whilst I wrap
the cakes, ready for tomorrow, read her chapter
five of Middlemarch. She sits, poker straight,
blue eyes brimming.
Hannah Tuson
Hannah Tuson, 22. Hannah has a 2.1 in English Literature from the University of Sheffield. She spends a lot of time in the Saison Poetry Library and regularly attends Spoken Word nights. She loves crackly black and white films and is currently trying her hand at fashion illustration.